


Fostering Relations

by Aelfgyfu



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 15:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 49,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1653857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aelfgyfu/pseuds/Aelfgyfu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A desert planet, a Fountain of Youth device, and SG-1; what could possibly go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set in season 7, between "Death Knell" and "Heroes."
> 
> Originally posted at Aelfgyfu's Mead Hall 25 Nov 2006.
> 
> Nominated for a 2007 Stargate Fan Award.
> 
> Many thanks once again to Redbyrd and to my husband, for their help and careful readings! Thanks also to Aurora Novarum, whose "Just a Scientist" helped fill out my picture of Bill Lee (but don't blame her if you don't like how I write him!)
> 
> Stargate SG-1 and its characters belong to Showtime, Gekko, MGM-UA, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions, Stargate SG-1 Prod. Ltd. Partnership, and probably other persons or entities whom I've forgotten. No copyright infringement is intended. In fact, this story makes no sense if you haven't seen the show, so I encourage you to watch! And buy all the DVDs! Just like I do! Dialogue and plot are my own.

"So the UAV shows a small but developed civilization that seems to have successful crops despite an arid climate," Daniel concluded his portion of the briefing. "We can't tell from the UAV what technologies they may be using to achieve this growth"—he pressed a button on the remote to replay the images of surprisingly green fields surrounded by parched soil and what looked like just plain dust— "but a mission to the planet is definitely in order."

General Hammond smiled—a little indulgently, Daniel thought, but he'd happily take indulgence if it would get him on the planet. No one would say this would be a walk in the park, because saying that always doomed a mission, but he knew the general would be happy to give them a relatively safe one right now. Sam had spent the last couple of weeks recovering from injuries inflicted by a Kull Warrior chasing her around what had been the Alpha Site, and this would be her first mission since being declared fit to go off world again.

Sam pointed out that the UAV hadn't detected any radiation or EM signatures that would indicate advanced technology, but the UAV had missed things before.

"Many times," Jack contributed not quite under his breath.

Sam was undaunted and added that she was quite willing to investigate. "The area appears to get very little rainfall. There are very few trees and, besides the fields, only that garden by the ziggurat. Everything else looks like desert. _I'd_ like to know how they irrigate their fields, sirs, even if it's without technology."

Daniel tactfully didn't point out that not all technology required electricity, nuclear energy, or naquada, but he decided that he'd tell Sam later about the great engineering accomplishments of the Persians, Romans, and Aztecs. _Much_ later.

The general asked a few more questions but ended the briefing with the magic words, "SG-1, you have a go" and set their departure time for 1700, to arrive after the planet's sun was up but while it should still be relatively cool. "I recommend you all get a little sleep between now and then."

"Thank you, sir," Daniel said as his military teammates stood when General Hammond did. He was glad to see that Sam showed no lingering stiffness when she rose.

Sam seemed pleased about the mission, Teal'c seemed unmoved, and Jack seemed . . . annoyed.

"1700! So just when I should be knocking off for the day, I have to start a whole new work day," Jack said in obvious disgust as soon as Hammond disappeared into his office. "Why can't all planets be in the same time zone?"

"It _is_ in the same time zone," Daniel pointed out, he hoped in a reasonable tone.

"As _what_?" Jack asked incredulously.

"As Tokyo," Teal'c answered before Daniel could. Daniel managed to hide his surprise.

Jack's astonishment quickly faded to the same look of disgust while Sam tried to stifle a giggle. Daniel didn't even try to hide his grin.

"Did you put him up to that?" Jack asked, jabbing a finger at Daniel.

Daniel just waved a little as he turned and left the room, leaving Jack to hassle Teal'c if he felt like it. No one ever bugged Teal'c for long, not even Jack; bothering Teal'c offered very little satisfaction and carried with it certain risks.

In the elevator, Daniel checked his watch. Almost noon—he should have plenty of time to get ready for the mission, except that he knew Jack would come after him to make him go eat and then take a nap. Since their return from Central America, Daniel had been trying to humor Jack a little by giving in to some of the nagging. Jack didn't really show it, but Daniel knew the whole adventure must have scared the hell out of him. A minute or two later, and Jack would have found Daniel in pieces. Pretty small pieces, most likely. Even Sam's injuries hadn't gotten Jack off his case—and he felt a little guilty for hoping that they would. Not that he _wanted_ her to get hurt, but at least since she _was_ hurt, couldn't it make things easier on him?

His musings reminded Daniel to stop by Bill Lee's office on the way back to his own. Bill didn't talk about Central America, hadn't since he left the infirmary following their return. Daniel didn't want to ask directly, but Bill definitely seemed more nervous than he used to, and Daniel was concerned. He'd given the other man some space, but now it was time to say something. His friends would do the same for him, he was sure. Whether he wanted them to or not, he thought with half a smile.

"Hey, Bill," he said, sticking his head into the lab.

"Daniel! Wait—back out!" A goggled Doctor Lee waved his arms frantically, and Daniel pulled back into the hall and flattened himself against the wall for good measure. He was ready to relax again when a bright flash of light hit his eyes—pretty impressive, considering he'd been looking at the wall opposite Bill's door, and the concrete of the wall was not very reflective.

Daniel stood where he was, blinking the spots away. He heard voices from inside the room and wondered who else was in there.

Suddenly Bill rushed out the door, a huge pair of dark goggles pushed back on his head. "Are you okay?" he asked urgently, starting to put a hand on Daniel's arm but then pulling it back and just kind of waving it apologetically. "Sorry! I didn't know you were coming! I should have closed the door! I—"

"Yeah, closing the door might have been a good idea," Daniel said, blinking some more but resisting the temptation to rub his eyes. It wouldn't help, he knew. "What are you doing?"

"Well, you know our usual flash-bangs don't work on Kull Warriors."

"Yes, but we've got a weapon we can use against them now."

"But maybe we can adapt the technology from their armor to protect _our_ people from Goa'uld shock grenades!" Bill pointed back into the lab, and Daniel followed him in.

"Better now, Sergeant?" Bill asked, and Daniel recognized the owner of the second voice he'd heard.

"Like I said, it helps, but not as much as those goggles you're wearing," said Siler, who was rubbing his eyes and standing very close to where the flash-bang had obviously been set off. Next to him on a table sat a pair of wrap-around sunglasses that looked rather . . . homemade. "But it's better now, sir."

"Yeah," Bill said apologetically. "We've still got to work on those filters. But definitely an improvement over the last ones we tried, right?"

"Yes, sir," said Siler. "But I think I really need to replace some burned-out relays on level 18." The long-suffering sergeant left, but he had to put his hands out to find the doorway properly.

"Bill," Daniel asked, trying not to sound accusing, "why are you experimenting on Siler?"

" _With_ Siler, not _on_ Siler," Bill insisted. "He likes it. Gives him a break from changing relays and such."

Daniel frowned at Bill, letting him know he wasn't fooled.

Bill sighed. "The Marines refused to do it anymore. I could have Hammond order them," he added, "but some of them were starting to get really mad at me, and I have a home and family."

Daniel felt a laugh bubbling up at the thought of Marines annoyed but unable to do anything about it. He tried to contain it, but it came out as sort of a hiccup. It wasn't funny to Bill. The Marines would never lay a finger on any of the civilians—General Hammond and Jack O'Neill made damn sure of that—but they could be pretty scary. "Pardon me," he said.

"Sure." Bill hardly seemed to have registered Daniel's odd sound. "The composite materials in the Kull Warrior's suit are hard to reproduce! But it's great stuff! The energy-dissipating potential is phenomenal. It's not just the strength of the warriors themselves; the armor prevents. . . ."

Daniel only half listened to Bill as he looked around the lab some more. He felt a little guilty, ignoring most of what Bill was saying as he accused Jack of ignoring him, but he really couldn't follow the technical details. He picked up the sunglasses. They looked solid black. He held them up and squinted through them, trying to see the hallway light or the one work light Bill had going in the lab.

"They're peril-sensitive," Bill said with a chuckle.

"What?" Bill loved to make movie and tv references, but Daniel usually didn't get them.

"It's _Hitchhiker's_ —you know what . . . never mind."

Daniel tried sliding them on over his own glasses; he could at least show some interest in his friend's project, even if he didn't get his jokes. "It's all pretty dark—no, wait, I can see better now!"

"I turned on the overheads," Bill's voice said from farther away than Daniel expected. He hadn't been able to make out Bill walking over to the switch for the main lights.

"Oh," Daniel said, removing the sunglasses.

"That's the other problem. On the one hand, they don't offer perfect protection. On the other, they're about as hard to see through as these." Bill waved his own, much larger protective goggles.

"So I guess I won't ask for a pair for our next mission," Daniel said with a smile.

"I wouldn't." Bill put his goggles down on a table and walked back to Daniel, who handed him the sunglasses.

"But you didn't come looking for sunglasses." Bill said.

"No," Daniel said. Inspiration hit. "I was gonna grab some lunch in the commissary. Wanna come?"

"Really?" Bill brightened noticeably. Daniel had to admit he couldn't remember asking Bill to eat with him before, though he considered him a friend, especially now, after all they'd been through. Of course, he didn't usually _ask_ anyone to eat with him; his teammates would sometimes drag him out, or he'd run to the commissary by himself to grab something quick so he could get back to work. Occasionally he'd sit down with someone already there, like Nyan.

Bill continued to tell him about the remarkable physical properties of the armor on the way to lunch. Some of it did sound interesting—the material was lightweight and flexible but very strong—but Bill kept throwing in chemical names that meant nothing to Daniel. He mostly made appropriate noises. Both men got sandwiches, widely agreed to be the safest of the commissary's offerings, and found a table.

"So, how have you been?" Daniel asked cautiously at a lull in the conversation—well, it had become almost a monologue.

"I'm fine," Bill said quickly. "How are you? You said you're going out on another mission?"

"Yeah, tonight. We've got an arid planet with a small population and this fantastic ziggurat—a very large structure with a temple at the top," Daniel explained. "Maybe what the Tower of Babel was supposed to be like."

"Oh," said Bill. "So Major Carter's all right now?"

"Yeah, she's fine. Janet certified her fit for off-world travel two days ago, and she's eager to go."

"You guys seem to heal fast," Bill said.

Daniel held his sandwich still in mid-air for a moment, but then he took a quick bite to cover his reaction and buy himself some time. He was really going to say something to Bill this time; this was as close as Bill had come to mentioning his own injuries. As he tried to formulate a response, a familiar voice shouted from the doorway, " _Here's_ where he's hiding! You know, I never would have thought to look here!"

The rest of SG-1 trooped into the commissary together. Great timing. Daniel set the sandwich down on the plate and tried quickly to gather his thoughts.

Bill jumped to his feet. "I'll just take this back to the lab," he said, clutching his sandwich.

"No, no, no—you don't have to leave!" Daniel protested.

"But they're _your_ friends. I don't think they want to talk to me." Bill looked at the trio working their way quickly through the line.

"Are you kidding? Sam _understands_ —" Oh, he didn't want to make it sound like he didn't understand anything Bill said. Daniel started over: "Sam understands what you do a lot better than I do. And Teal'c is very interested. Jack—Jack always pretends he's not interested. He does it to me all the time."

Bill hesitated. Daniel knew that Bill liked to talk, but he buried himself in his work and only saw a few other scientists on a regular basis, and presumably his family. And Siler. Company was probably good for Bill.

"And if you run out with your sandwich," Daniel pressed, "Jack will hassle you for eating on the run." He added, more to himself than to Bill, "Something else he does to me all the time."

To Daniel's surprise, Bill sat back down. But Jack started in again on Daniel before he'd even sat down with his chili, telling him they'd checked his office _and_ Sam's lab _and_ the gym before they gave up on getting him to come to lunch and went by themselves.

"It was my idea," Bill said, keeping his eyes on his plate, while Daniel was still trying to figure out why Jack would be looking for him in the gym half a day before they went on a mission.

Vaguely troubled by what seemed like an unnecessary attempt to defend him, Daniel corrected Bill, "No, actually, it was mine."

Jack stared at Daniel and then Bill. "What is this, a date?"

Bill just blinked and looked away. Fortunately, he didn't try to respond.

"Bill was just telling me about the work he's been doing on the super-soldier armor." Changing the subject was usually effective with Jack.

Soon Sam and Bill were covering the same ground that Daniel had covered with Bill, but faster and with even more technical language, and Jack started a side conversation with Teal'c about whether the Kull Warriors had any actual tactics or just relied on brute strength and stupidity. Daniel was wishing _he_ had left when Bill wanted to go. But Bill seemed more at ease, so it was worth it. Daniel did end up excusing himself first so that he could finish pulling together his notes for the mission; the notes he'd made for the briefing weren't quite enough. The architecture looked more like something from the area of Iran than Egypt, as he'd mentioned at the briefing. Egypt was still the culture with which he felt most comfortable, and he wanted more references. He never knew when something significant might turn up, and wanted to be damned sure he wouldn't miss it when it did.

*****

Jack didn't really mind changing time zones as much as he said. Embarking on a new mission gave him energy no matter what time it was, and he'd been able to grab a two-hour nap before gearing up, which was pretty good in his experience.

Daniel was walking in a minute or two early, with Carter, talking and waving his hands. No matter how much he talked about the agriculture and other potential technologies, his real motivations on this mission were clear. When he mentioned the ziggurat, he talked fast and made bigger gestures, though he seemed to be trying not to talk too much about it. He was giving the military what they needed to hear to justify a mission, and Jack certainly wasn't going to call him on it today. Or maybe even this year, he thought, as he eyeballed his teammates out of habit, making sure they had all their equipment, all secure.

Seeing Jonas's excitement at meeting new peoples, sometimes even enemies, had stuck in Jack's craw. More than once during that year he'd tried to remember the last time Daniel was genuinely enthusiastic to meet someone, only to remember the obvious answer: Kelowna. Daniel had been so intrigued to meet people whose historical developments seemed so close to Earth's. The fascination turned to horror as he saw better than any of them that Kelowna was about to repeat Earth's mistakes, and on an even worse scale. Jack would push that out of his mind, but when was the last time before that? The best he could come up with was when Daniel met that Unas and convinced it not to eat him, but learning of Rothman's death had put a damper on Daniel's enthusiasm pretty quickly.

They'd stopped doing—what should he call it?—diplomatic missions before Daniel's death and ascension, though no one had made a deliberate determination to take them off those missions, as far as Jack knew. And archaeological missions, too. Seeing Daniel's thrill at reading the ancient records on P3X—the planet with the incredible shrinking protective dome—had been a huge relief, not just to him, but to Carter and Teal'c, he was sure. Daniel's sympathy for the survivors of the Stromos, evident even while he was recovering from the invasion of his mind, convinced Jack that his teammate was well and truly back. At the same time, he'd been sorry to see Daniel go through more guilt and worry over other people who mostly couldn't care less about the original inhabitant body they were using. They were damned sure going to do some of the missions Daniel wanted this year.

Jack finished his visual checks on his teammates without much conscious attention to it. Everyone was properly kitted out, and the two scientists were raring to go.

"Ready, SG-1?" General Hammond's voice came over the intercom.

"As ready as we'll ever be," Jack replied.

"Godspeed, SG-1," Hammond said simply.

A little rush—no, a big rush—and then they were on a hot, dry planet that almost made Jack wish they still came through the wormhole with a little bit of ice on them. There was enough of a wind to make sand blow around and sting his face a little. And this was the cool part of the day? He squinted around. No one was near the Gate, and the area was barren enough that they'd see: a few scrub bushes, some rocks, a lot of dust. No shade, and it must already been nearly a hundred degrees.

"The sun's been up, what, about two hours?" Daniel asked Carter.

"Closer to an hour and a half, I think," Carter corrected. "Glad I brought the SPF 60."

"I'm sure it's cooler at night," Daniel said apologetically, turning more towards Jack. "The sun has already started heating things up."

How the hell could Daniel tell what Jack was thinking? All he had done was look around! Jack scowled, but Daniel was with Carter, checking out the DHD, and he missed Jack's expression completely.

Teal'c was obviously continuing his visual survey as well but found nothing worth reporting. They could see shapes on the horizon that looked like the village the UAV had shown. They could even see the ziggurat Daniel wanted to see; it was a small, fuzzy shape, but the ground was so flat that the tall structure was apparent even at this distance.

They fell into their usual formation without Jack having to say a word and proceeded to the village. The breeze was short-lived, for which Jack was glad; it didn't make things cooler, just stirred up dust. After about ten minutes they were near the small village, which consisted of what looked like simple, whitewashed clay brick buildings, most of two stories, a few of three.

Before anyone could appreciate the architecture further, two children darted out between the buildings, one obviously chasing the other, and froze at seeing the strangers. SG-1 froze as well. Then Daniel, being Daniel, took a step forward and called out a greeting in English. The boys screamed and ran back the way they'd come.

"Well, that was a good start," Jack said.

"Did you see their robes?" Daniel was unfazed. "They looked like linen! And the colors!"

Yes, Jack had actually seen their robes; it was his job to notice things. He hadn't realized that they were linen, but he had seen that they were blue with white trim. He'd also noted that the boys wouldn't have looked out of place on Abydos. Daniel started after them.

"Daniel, let's hold here," Jack warned. "I'm sure someone will come out any moment now."

"Didn't you say that cotton wasn't made on Earth until _after_ Ra had closed the Stargate?" Carter asked, and Jack suspected her question rather than his order had made the archaeologist stop.

"Yes! The Abydonians had apparently invented cotton themselves, independently of Earth—unless our archaeological record on Earth is incomplete, which is always possible, of course."

"Welcoming committee," Jack said as two women came slowly between the buildings.

Daniel stepped forward again. Jack rolled his eyes, although Daniel couldn't see it. A step forward here, a step forward there, and pretty soon Daniel was half a dozen paces ahead of them—and blocking any decent shot at anyone he was meeting. Jack had thought for a while it was cluelessness, but after a few years Jack had begun to suspect it was deliberate. He stepped forward while moving a little farther to the side to have a good angle. The women didn't appear armed, but their robes had generous folds, and there were rooftops and windows everywhere.

Daniel greeted the women in English. They stayed a good twenty meters away, not quite stepping out from between the two buildings. They looked at him with identical frowns.

So Daniel tried another language. Jack recognized it as Abydonian. Their expressions didn't change. And so on with another language, and so on, and—and then one of the women said something. Now Daniel was frowning. He answered her. The woman said something else.

"Daniel?"

"Still working on it," Daniel said, and then continued.

As Daniel and the women traded words with neither side understanding perfectly, as far as Jack could tell, Jack could see the boys slinking back between the buildings, followed by an older man who barked something at the women. One turned and said something to the old man in a dismissive tone and then returned to watching her companion trade words and phrases with Daniel.

"Daniel. Jack. Sam. Teal'c," Daniel said, pointing to each one in turn.

"Golshun," said the speaker. Daniel repeated the name. "Vahara." She pointed to her companion.

"Vahara!" Daniel exclaimed. "Jack, this might be Old Persian!" He said a few more words, a little haltingly.

"Or not," muttered Jack.

But Golshun, though she was still frowning, seemed to understand and responded. Daniel answered her, again a little slowly, and they definitely seemed to be getting somewhere.

The old man had come up behind the women and was obviously demanding to know what was going on. Vahara was shushing him, but finally Golshun said something to the man, then something to Daniel, and waved the group to follow them.

Daniel started after her without hesitation, of course. Jack sighed. He hated it when he couldn't understand the natives. "Daniel, what's going on?"

"Well, I think it's _related_ to Old Persian, but it seems to have diverged somewhat. I actually tried Kurdish and Iranian, and she showed some recognition, but—"

"Daniel! Where the hell are we going?" The whole team was now walking between the buildings. Jack wished he had enough control of his team _not_ to walk further into foreign territory until _after_ they'd answered questions like that . . . but what the hell.

"I don't know," Daniel answered without concern. "Oh!—there's a market!"

They emerged between the buildings. The women had waited right at the edge of the square for them. The place was pretty impressive, really. There were buildings on all four sides, some right against each other, but every few houses, there would be space enough for people to walk between. On two sides, it looked as if the houses were more than the one row deep on the square. The houses were all whitewashed, but some had decorative work painted above or beside the doorways and windows.

The open space had a stone fountain at its center. Water bubbled up a central spout—wait, that seemed to be metal—and then splashed into an upper basin, which dripped into a broader lower basin. There were metal cups hanging by handles from the upper basin, and a man had taken one off to get a drink from the upper basin. Not Jack's idea of hygiene, but then, few planets shared Jack's idea of hygiene—much of Earth didn't, as a matter of fact.

Around the edges of the square were many wooden stalls with rough cloth coverings selling various goods. The ground was dirt, but it seemed free of rocks, and somehow it wasn't as dusty as the ground outside the village. Maybe all the people packed it down better. There was a smell of sweat, but there were also more delicate, spicy smells. With a pang, Jack thought of Abydos, and he looked again at Daniel.

Daniel was standing there with the women, his mouth slightly open. Both women were grinning.

"Guess they've impressed him," Jack said to Carter.

"Wow," Carter said. "It looks like they have a surprising amount of trade goods!" She pointed to stalls and began reciting, "That one looks like they're selling plain cloth; that one seems to sell weavings; that—"

"I can see, Carter. And so can they. We've got their attention."

The talk around the square was dying out, and more and more people were turning to look at the strangers. Their desert camos didn't exactly fit in with the robes, primarily white but often with pink, blue, or orange trim at the edges. Again Jack was struck by the appearance of the people. Maybe Daniel could see some difference, but he thought they'd all fit in on Abydos. If only it still existed. But this village did indeed seem richer than anything Abydos had to offer.

Several people, both men and women, approached the team. Daniel spoke with them, they talked back, and Jack was none the wiser.

"Would it kill him to _interpret_ once in a while? It's what we pay him to do," he grumbled.

"It's _among_ the things you pay me to do, and I'll interpret when I get enough to be worth translating," Daniel said in a silky tone, either to annoy Jack or to avoid alarming the natives, then slid seamlessly back into whatever language it was. Old Persian, he'd said, right?

A loud laugh from a man made Jack start just a little. The man clapped Daniel on the arm. Daniel grinned and talked some more. He seemed to be picking up speed a little.

"Daniel?"

"I think we're getting somewhere."

Suddenly a woman was at Jack's elbow jabbering.

"Nope, sorry. No sprechen Old Persian."

She seemed undeterred and continued to talk, but she slowed down and made exaggerated faces, as if he were a baby.

"No hablo. Je ne parle pas . . . whatever."

The woman grinned as if he'd just made a joke, which in fact he had.

"Daniel, are you sure they don't speak English? Maybe they're just having us on?"

Daniel tossed a pained look his way and then went back to smiling and chatting. Teal'c and Carter seemed to have gained buddies as well. Jack sighed.

*****

It had taken a couple of hours, but Daniel had finally gotten comfortable enough to have a real conversation with these people. They were now finishing lunch in what must have been the home of one of the wealthier families. The ground floor was actually slightly sunken, so that one stepped down into it, and they were lounging on pillows at a low table and really enjoying the food—or at least he and Sam were, and Jack hadn't been complaining. Beer at a meal usually made Jack happy.

Despite the great distances in time and culture, somehow the food reminded Daniel of Abydos. The fragrant herbs, especially the coriander in the meat stew; the cheeses; the beer; and the heavy use of bread, even if it wasn't quite the same as Abydonian bread; all reminded Daniel of the now-lost planet he'd called home for a time.

But the language was very different. He focused on that to pull himself out of his nostalgia. Now that he'd gotten the hang of the different vowels, he could follow a fair amount. Unfortunately, Old Persian was not one of his best languages. He wasn't sure how much of the trouble he was having with vocabulary was due to his own rustiness and how much was due to language divergence, but at least the syntax seemed the same. Or mostly the same. Occasionally a giggle suggested to him that he'd committed some malapropism. But his interlocutors were happy to find synonyms to explain words he didn't understand or to rephrase entire sentences.

The people here insisted on talking to his teammates as well, despite the fact that his teammates only smiled and nodded. They seemed to be speaking very slowly and in short, simple sentences. He did explain more than once that his teammates didn't speak the language at all, but that only caused more giggles. He began to suspect that they found his friends' efforts to be polite in the face of gibberish amusing.

There was an awkward moment when Daniel explained that they'd come through the Stargate; they too used the word "Chappa'ai." The Goa'uld must have spread the term here too. Their hosts seemed very nervous at the revelation, but Daniel reiterated that their interests involved learning and trading, and they wanted a mutually beneficial relationship.

Jack, of course, asked about the sudden silence, but Daniel was able to allay his fears. The people didn't seem frightened, really. A little nervous, but certainly not hostile.

Gradually he managed to learn a little about the planet. They did in fact know of the Goa'uld; they spoke carefully then, apparently wanting to consult the local priest before they told him too much. But they were apparently not very worried about the Goa'uld's return. They had heard of Jaffa but never seen one, and they obviously did not recognize Teal'c's tattoo as an indication that he was one. Daniel explained very carefully that Teal'c was a Jaffa who had turned against the Goa'uld. It would be bad if the priest recognized Teal'c and they were immediately branded deceivers for not mentioning his identity up front. The people were uniformly surprised at the revelation, but most seemed quite comfortable with it.

He got the biggest reaction by telling those at his table that their ancestors had probably come from Earth.

Again, the people turned reticent; the priest had final say over how much of their learning could be shared with him.

"If you were simply from another village," said one man, "there would be no problem. But from the other side of the Chappa'ai. . . ."

"You have other villages?" Daniel asked in some surprise. Granted, it was a small settlement, smaller than Abydos, but many planets only seemed to have one inhabited area near the Gate.

Everyone laughed at his question. "Of course! One is half a day's walk from here, another other a little further, and in another direction," Vahara told him. "How could we only have one village? We grow most of our food here, but the cotton is grown several days' walk from here, where the river runs freely."

Daniel took the opportunity to ask about their irrigation. He was not surprised that they had nothing of what Sam would consider technology, but they had a very effective hydraulic system that not only watered the fields, it supplied the fountain in the square, even during the dry season—which this was.

After lunch, they were invited to join in the nap everyone took in the heat of the day. The table was cleared and set to the side, some of the guests left for their own homes, and rugs were laid out on the floor. The fact that it was below street level helped keep the room a little cooler than the outdoors had become.

Jack insisted on standing watch, and Daniel gratefully indulged in a nap. He hadn't had time to sleep before their departure, and struggling along in the language, combined with frequent breaks to clue his teammates in about what was going on, could be exhausting in its own way.

He awoke before his hosts stirred, however, and he stole a few moments to make some notes before the others awoke. He'd been told at lunch that after the nap someone would take him to meet the head priest.

*****

No way in hell was Daniel going off alone with some local to meet the priest, and Daniel must know that, Jack thought as he glared at the other man.

"Daniel, I'd like to see the fields; do you think you could ask someone to show me to them? I know they aren't running any equipment, but I'm still interested in seeing how they irrigate and what they grow," Carter interrupted in an obvious attempt to mollify Daniel.

It worked. Daniel spoke with one of the women, and soon she was leading Carter from the room. Teal'c went with her, ostensibly for protection, but then Jack realized that left him alone with Daniel, with no back-up if the man stayed stubborn.

"I'll just tag along. You know, even if I overhear, none of it will mean anything to me."

"But what if he wants to _show_ me something that he doesn't want to show _you_?" Daniel argued.

"As long as I can still see you, we're fine," Jack said with a smile that he knew would irritate Daniel. He waited. He could tell Daniel was trying to decide whether he should just drop it and let Jack come along or spend more time arguing—thus delaying his meet-'n'-greet with the priest.

Reason won out quickly this time, and soon three of them were marching in the direction of the ziggurat.

"Hope Carter doesn't forget to reapply her sunscreen," Jack said, but it was to himself, since Daniel remained deep in conversation with their guide, an old man who looked like a stiff breeze might blow him away but who still managed to keep a good pace through the heat.

"Did Carter check the ozone here? Maybe more gets through here on Earth. Is there any SPF 100?" Jack tried again a couple of minutes later. Daniel didn't even deign to turn and look at him.

As they drew closer to the ziggurat, Jack could hear the excitement in Daniel's voice, even though he couldn't tell what the men were saying. He could even feel a bit of the excitement himself. Maybe it was Daniel's tone, his voice going faster and higher than usual, like a record sped up just slightly, but maybe it was the structure itself. The thing had to be nearly ten stories high! It _was_ a wonder of engineering. And the bottom levels were painted a vibrant green, the middle tiers were the color of plain dried clay, and the top ones had a blue-purple tinge to them. One set of stairs ran straight down the middle of the building, leading to what appeared to be the only door, near the top.

They had to walk through what appeared to be some old ruins to get to the ziggurat itself, and then they broke off and went to the surprisingly lush garden next to the structure rather than going straight up to the temple. A man greeted them with a little surprise. Daniel exchanged a few words with him.

"Jack, this is Kudadad," he gestured at the smiling priest. Then he named Jack to Kudadad with some words Jack didn't understand. Jack waved.

"Kudadad was told to expect _me_ ," Daniel said, with just a little added weight on the pronoun, "but not _you_."

"Don't mind me," Jack said to the priest directly. "Don't speak the language. Speak as freely as you want."

Daniel emitted a slight snort and then, presumably, translated more or less what Jack had said. Probably less rather than more.

"Okay, Jack," he said after a bit. "We're going to sit in the garden. Think you can behave?"

"Where you go, I go," Jack smiled.

"You didn't answer the question."

"What do you think I am?" Jack was genuinely a little annoyed, and it must have showed.

"Sorry." Daniel raised his hands. "Just—don't interrupt. Don't keep asking me what we're saying, because it's rude, and you'll only just tell me how dull and useless it is anyway."

"I'm wounded!"

Daniel just shook his head and walked with Kudadad. Their guide said a few more words and departed, and Jack followed the other two men under a trellis. They sat down on a bench, and Daniel and Kudadad seemed to be getting on like old buddies reunited.

It was a beautiful garden, and it seemed cooler here than it had just outside it. Jack looked at the plants, but he didn't know much about plants. Carter knew more. Maybe he could show her the place later. He walked around the little brick paths laid out, staying close to Daniel, but Daniel appeared in no danger of anything worse than a sore throat from talking too much. And that wasn't very likely; the man could talk for _days_ with hardly a break, it sometimes felt like. The garden was shady enough they weren't even at risk of a sunburn.

After Jack had walked the paths nearest Daniel for almost thirty minutes, Daniel broke off to say, "Jack, could you stop that?"

"What?"

"Pacing!"

"Gotta do something."

"Play solitaire or something."

"Didn't bring my cards."

Daniel sighed and went back to his conversation. Jack diplomatically decided to sit down on a nearby bench. He started rifling through his backpack.

Suddenly the priest became upset.

"Jack?" Daniel said mildly—in that dangerous mild voice that alerted Jack that he was in trouble.

"What now? I stopped walking!"

"Kudadad wondered what you were carrying."

"Okay."

"And he noticed that knife you just pulled out and put back into your bag."

"So?"

"It's a weapon. Weapons aren't allowed in temple precincts. Which this is. These are," Daniel amended. He walked over to Jack.

"So . . . what?"

"You have to leave. And take all our weapons." He pulled out his own knife, which the priest hadn't seen under his BDU jacket and which he could no doubt have kept concealed there, and his handgun.

"Are you _nuts_?"

"He's a priest. We're lucky he didn't just throw us _both_ out! We violated the sacred precincts! He says their god is not an angry god, but still. . . ."

"Not angry? Some Goa'uld he is."

"I don't think this one's a Goa'uld."

"But you told me—"

"And I'm _trying_ to get the story," Daniel said impatiently, handed Jack his own knife and handgun, "but I don't think he's going to say any more until you're gone. With _all_ the weapons!"

"Hey, the P-90 and your handgun were in sight the whole time!"

"He didn't recognize them, Jack! They have knives, spears, and apparently something like a crossbow as weapons."

"But—"

"Look, the fact that he _didn't_ recognize them as weapons shows that they don't have weapons like these."

"Did you see what a crossbow did to my shoulder a few years back?"

"That wasn't a crossbow, actually, that was a simple bow." Daniel obviously didn't realize he wasn't helping his own case with that one. "Jack, he doesn't recognize guns. He obviously hasn't seen a zat in use, or he'd have been suspicious of my gun. I doubt he's seen staff weapons; no one reacted to Teal'c's. We need to get the weapons out _now_." Daniel pleaded with him with his eyes as well as his voice. "Look, you can go stand just outside the garden and radio me as often as you like."

And so Jack found himself outside the garden, where there _wasn't_ any shade, with the sun still fairly high in the sky, radioing Daniel every five minutes. He had to admit after the first fifteen minutes that he was doing that more out of pique than for security. He checked on Carter, too. She was having fun. He applied some more sunscreen and switched to every ten minutes, but Daniel was still not pleased, and it wasn't funny anymore.

Finally Daniel suggested, with such politeness that he must be seriously ticked, that Jack go back to the village, where there was shade and water and more to look at, and that Jack call in every half hour.

Jack gave a last look at the ziggurat. He radioed Carter.

"Sir? They have quite a sophisticated irrigation system engineered, considering that—"

"Carter, any signs of technology?"

"Well, I imagine Daniel would call it technology, but it's far behind our own. . . ."

"Any signs of danger?"

"No, sir."

"Teal'c?"

"No danger. No technology." The big guy sounded disappointed. He was probably about as happy out there with Carter as Jack was here outside the garden.

"Okay. Daniel is having a _wonderful_ time talking with a priest in a garden where weapons and I are not welcome. It really seems to check out. I'm heading back to the village. Keep up the regular contacts, and I'll meet you back there."

"Understood."

So Jack walked back to the village in the heat, drinking from his canteen and wondering if it was safe to drink from the village fountain before Carter tested the water. Damn. He should have had her do that before she took off to the fields. The water looked good. Maybe he could get some more beer.

He nearly lost his desire to drink from the fountain when he got back to the village and saw a mastage drinking from the lower basin. A mastage! Daniel would love that! Or maybe he wouldn't appreciate the reminder. They'd never seen them anywhere but Abydos.

Once Daniel had heard about the destruction of Abydos, which they'd had to tell him when he asked how Kasuf and Skaara were, he'd buried himself in the reports on the matter. He'd come by later to ask Jack a few questions, and Jack had done all he could to convince him that no one blamed Daniel and that the Abydonians were now safe and happy, but he could only do so much. "Safe and happy" on another plane of existence just sucked for the people on this one, he knew from personal experience. The only thing worse, in fact, was when their safe and happily ascended Daniel had disappeared at the time Abydos was destroyed, and for two months Jack wondered if his insistence that Daniel get involved had finally destroyed his friend for good.

"Daniel?" he radioed his teammate.

"Jack, it hasn't even been half an hour," Daniel answered in a tone he was obviously trying to keep under control.

Jack frowned. "Twenty-two minutes! _You're_ quibbling about time with _me_? Do you even know what day it is?"

There was a slight pause. Gotcha, he thought.

"Thursday."

"Thursday the what?"

"Oh, for God's sake, Jack! I'm fine, we're talking about important things, and now I'm being rude to a priest. _Don't_ call back in less than thirty minutes. Bother Sam. Or Teal'c. Jackson out."

_Jackson out_? Had he been watching movies with Teal'c again? He never said that, even when Jack wanted him to.

Jack sat down in the shade of the fountain and smiled at a couple of kids who walked up. Soon he found himself in a weird sort of 'conversation' with the children and their mother, who gabbled at him in a way that seemed quite friendly, but he had no idea what she was saying. So he responded with observations about the village, the choice of pink for the trim on her son's robe, and other such fascinating topics. His butt was going numb, he wanted not just a beer but a _cold_ beer, and he didn't even have the rest of his team to talk to.

Daniel was so dead.


	2. Chapter 2

Daniel ran towards the central square where the rest of his team waited—had _been_ waiting. He was so dead; Jack would see to that when he finally got back. He couldn't believe Jack hadn't radioed more to nag him, and he was sure he wouldn't have lost track of time if Jack had been bugging him more. Not that that would fly as an excuse. But maybe what he had learned would make up for it.

He was really surprised that Jack had held himself to calling on the radio only every half-hour to urge Daniel to hurry back. Jack really did seem to be making an effort to be polite to these friendly people, even if he couldn't understand them. Perhaps it was easier for Jack to be polite _because_ he couldn't understand them, Daniel thought. They gave him virtually no opportunity for wising off.

He envied the people here their robes, which were not unlike those he'd worn on Abydos. They'd be more comfortable in this heat and dust than BDUs. The sandals would be better, too, although he'd gotten to be pretty comfortable in military boots once a pair was broken in, as these were.

Soon Daniel could see the central marketplace in the gaps between the houses again. On Abydos, there hadn't been much to trade; this planet reminded him even more of Egypt in some ways. The village was small but more crowded, and there was actual trade, with jewelry, spices, blankets, and robes for sale. They even had a money economy, not just a barter system. But as on Abydos, the people here were very friendly, apparently feeling honored to be visited. Much of what Daniel had seen so far on this world felt achingly familiar, reassuring him and yet reminding him of all that he'd lost. He slowed down as he entered the crowded square.

And there, sitting by the central fountain, were his teammates. Teal'c glanced away from the woman who was chattering at them and offered a small smile, rising to his feet well before Daniel reached them. Maybe even Teal'c was a little perturbed by now. Daniel was so dead.

Jack jumped eagerly to his feet, looking so happy to see Daniel that he considered running back the way he'd come. He didn't know what to make of Jack in a mood like that. Sam jumped up too, looking very relieved. They all had wet patches on their uniforms, and the smell of sweat was actually stronger on them than on the natives, who presumably didn't use deodorant. Damned BDUs. He looked down at himself and realized that his uniform was a mess, too. The woman greeted him and then politely bowed out, as if she'd only been there to entertain the guests. He wondered if she had tired of the smell, and adding his odor had been the last straw.

"Hey," Daniel said. "Having fun?" That was dangerous, but he couldn't resist. In his place, Jack certainly wouldn't have.

Jack was apparently grateful enough that Daniel's return had driven off their interlocutor that he let that one slide. He gave a thin smile. "Oh, yeah, the locals have been talking our ears off."

Daniel was tempted to ask how they were getting on with the language then, but he put them out of their misery. "Well, it's all in a good cause. Maybe," he added, not wanting them even more annoyed if he turned out to be wrong.

That got their interest. Jack and Sam asked almost simultaneously, "What?"

"The local Goa'uld around here used to be a guy they call Tel-Shak."

"Telchak?" asked Sam.

"Used to?" asked Jack.

"Yes, and yes. As we already know," Daniel said with a little emphasis, unable to resist needling Jack if there was even a chance he hadn't been paying attention or had forgotten, "Telchak lost his war with Anubis and apparently disappeared"—he waved his hands vaguely—"many centuries ago."

"But he left some technology here?" Sam asked, and Daniel was sure that if she hadn't been wearing her sunglasses, he'd have seen that gleam in her eye that she got at the first suggestion of a new toy.

Daniel nodded. "It _seems_ so. Now, I don't understand the language perfectly yet—" he cautioned.

"What? You've had a whole day!" Jack broke in.

"—but," Daniel continued, pretending he hadn't been interrupted, "they have something that I _think_ translates roughly to 'Fountain of Youth.'"

Sam's smile slipped, and her voice was more hesitant. "Like the device you found in Honduras?"

Daniel nodded. "I think it could be. Now"—he held up a hand when Jack's mouth opened—"they don't actually _use_ it anymore. Their temple, the top portion of that ziggurat—"

"Daniel." Well, Jack _had_ been very patient for Daniel, so Daniel should probably make it short for him.

"They used to worship this Tel-Shak, but I guess the planet wasn't important enough for Anubis to bother with, because after a point, Tel-Shak stopped returning, but nobody took his place." Which was really fascinating, and Daniel had to work hard not to digress into how unusual that was, and how amazing their history was that they still had stories about this.

Jack's barked, " _When_?" helped get him back on track. So did realizing that Jack's sunscreen might have failed sometime in the last hour or two, and Sam's clearly hadn't lasted that long.

"Well, I'm working on exactly how they tell time here; the length of their days is pretty close to ours, but their year—"

Jack let out an exaggerated sigh.

"Okay, I'm guessing it was almost 3000 years ago."

Jack whistled.

"They went on worshipping Tel-Shak for a few generations, but they _still_ have stories about when Tel-Shak _used_ to come, quite regularly, I might add, and of course they noticed that he had stopped. Especially as one of his acts shortly before leaving was razing the village right around the ziggurat."

Jack winced visibly.

"Yeah. He gave them permission to build a new one, here," Daniel added sarcastically, gesturing at the houses. "A more modest one. He left some Jaffa here for a few years, but eventually they left too, through the Stargate. Periodically, some Jaffa would come back too, but then that stopped as well.

"Then one year the high priest began teaching that Tel-Shak, who hadn't been an awfully nice god after all, had been, well, removed by the true god, a greater god than Tel-Shak or any they had ever heard of. The new god saw Tel-Shak leave after the destruction of the great city and prevented him from ever returning. And they had good crops for years after Tel-Shak left, and no natural disasters, and after the Jaffa all left . . . well, they figured it must have been a divinity that saved them."

"Of course," muttered Jack.

Daniel went on, "They were so amazed that this new god hadn't appeared to demand tribute, hadn't even asked that they worship, that they decided this must be the one true god, and they named this god Khuda—the Persian word for 'god,' or as close as can be expected." Daniel grinned and waited for his audience to catch up with him.

His audience looked disappointingly unmoved. "Oh, come on, guys," he cajoled them, "here we've got a civilization doubtless taken from Earth God knows how long ago, and they were polytheistic, which the Goa'uld impersonation of gods no doubt strongly encouraged, but then, left on their own, they developed monotheism!"

Jack smiled wanly. "That's great."

Great? Daniel hadn't expected wild enthusiasm. In fact, he had kind of expected Jack to threaten him. He wasn't sure what to make of this reaction at all. "Jack, are you feeling okay?" Could he have gotten sun poisoning?

"I'd feel better if you'd get to the goddamned point!"

"Oh. Okay. Sorry. You weren't yourself for a moment there." Or he was, and Daniel in his excitement had missed the sarcasm.

"You got sidetracked on monotheism," Sam pointed out.

Oops. "Okay. So anyway, they have stories about Tel-Shak's device! They call it a _herad_ , something like 'healer.' It's fascinating, Sam!"

"You said they don't use it, but they still have the device?" She looked queasy.

"I'm sorry, guys—we should get out of the sun."

"What's the point?" Jack snapped. "You spent so long chatting with them, it's setting now!"

Daniel looked around. Jack had exaggerated, but certainly the sun was now slanting down on them from the west—at least, Daniel thought that was west—was west defined by a magnetic north, or by the direction of the sun? He'd have to ask Sam again—and probably wouldn't do any more damage today than it had already done.

"Okay. Here's what the priest told me: Tel-Shak used the device sometimes on his Jaffa, but more importantly, mostly on the people here, with very bad effects. I think he was experimenting with it. People were never the same after they were exposed to it; in fact, their own families couldn't be near them safely. If Tel-Shak used it on someone, the rest of the family would move out of the house to get out of their way. They were . . . changed. Irritable, violent. . . ." Daniel grimaced, putting the memories from his most recent trip to Central America back in the box out of which they were threatening to slip.

"They weren't allowed to use it themselves when Tel-Shak was still in the picture, of course. After they started to believe he was really, truly gone, occasionally someone who lost . . . someone they loved . . . would get the brilliant idea to try the healing device."

"Pet cemetery," Jack muttered.

"What?"

"Pet cemetery," the man repeated.

Oh, God, maybe Jack _was_ delirious.

With an air of long suffering, Teal'c explained, " _Pet Sematary_ is a work by Stephen King."

For a moment Daniel was afraid they'd all gotten sun poisoning, and it must have shown on his face.

"You haven't heard of Stephen King?" Jack snapped.

"Horror," Sam added.

"Yes, I'm starting to feel it myself," Daniel snapped, but the author's name had finally clicked. Did all his friends read horror? He'd ask Teal'c later. He couldn't remember ever having a conversation about Stephen King before.

"So when they were reanimated," Sam prompted him.

"Oh, yeah. Every so often someone would try it, and even on kids. . . ." He couldn't complete the thought.

"Oh, God," Jack said softly.

Daniel plunged ahead. "So, anyway, it was decided for the benefit of the community to wall the thing up. It wasn't safe, and they knew it. Knowledge of it was largely lost; only the priests know that it's there in a blocked-off side chamber of the ziggurat anymore."

"So these people think they know their own history, but the priests keep the device a secret?" Sam asked. Teal'c stiffened ever so slightly.

Daniel frowned. "Yes. They keep the device a secret so that no one will try to use it again. Everyone knows that Tel-Shak had what they considered 'magic' healing powers; only the priests know that one of his devices is still here."

"But that—" Sam started to object.

Well, Daniel wasn't thrilled about it himself, but he was surprised that Sam would object; he had the most problems with non-disclosure of any of them. "We work for the best-kept secret in any democracy on Earth, maybe any nation, and you're upset that they covered up one little bit of their past—their _distant_ past?"

The wrinkling of Sam's forehead communicated that she was probably annoyed at that answer, but she didn't say anything more.

"And they told you, a total stranger." The sarcasm in Jack's voice was obvious now, to Daniel's relief.

"I asked," he answered simply. "The priest's expression would have been funny if it weren't so . . . painful. Especially since he realized right away that he'd given it away."

"You asked them if they had a reanimator?" Jack's eyebrows rose behind his sunglasses.

"Yes, I asked them if they had a reanimator."

"Which comes not from Stephen King but H.P. Lovecraft," put in Teal'c unexpectedly.

"How long were you guys out in the sun?" Daniel demanded. "We all took the midday nap today!"

They all stared at him as if he were the one that was raving. Daniel crossed his arms and stopped speaking.

After a pause, Teal'c added, "The film _Re-Animator_ is based on a Lovecraft tale, 'Herbert West, Re-Animator.'" Then Teal'c fell still again and waited for Daniel to continue.

"Fine. I asked them if they had a reanimator," Daniel huffed, as if repeating his previous words could obliterate the exchange that had intervened. "I didn't know I'd left the experts on these matters out in the sun too long, or I might have consulted you before this. I . . . had to describe its effects, and the priest . . . you should have seen his face. So I _knew_. And then he was so upset that he'd let something slip! But I told him that we had already removed one of those devices from use, which was how _I_ knew about it—and how dangerous it is—and we would be happy to take this one off his hands."

They stared at him in silence. Sam and Jack's faces were unreadable behind their sunglasses, and Teal'c's was just his usual kind of unreadable.

"Well, we _are_ happy to take it off their hands, aren't we?"

"Yes! Yes," Sam confirmed. " _More_ than happy." She'd probably been wishing she could have gotten her hands on the original machine, but she'd been in the infirmary being treated for her injuries from their infiltration of Anubis's base when Jacob took it away to the Tok'ra.

Jack didn't look pleased, but he said, "I'd sleep better knowing there wasn't one of those around here waiting for another priest to slip up."

"Or give in to temptation," Daniel nodded. "A couple have tried. Others always stopped them before they got through, but the wall isn't what it used to be. The priests are afraid to do much to fix the wall, because it's kind of hard to sneak building materials into the ziggurat. And they don't want anyone inquiring into what exactly it is they're walling up. But the one I talked to is clearly worried that next time, someone will make it through without anyone to stop them." He spread his hands out in front of them and let them drop.

"So they said we can take it?" Sam asked, her face scrunched up to squint at him despite the sunglasses.

"Not . . . yet." Daniel waved a hand back the way he'd come. "There's one high priest now. There's one priest emeritus, if you will, a retired high priest named Kudaram, and two acolytes in their late teens. That's how they do it here now, so that there's always at least one man in his prime as the high priest, preferably with another priest assisting, and two or three learning, so that if one dies, there will always be at least one left. The other priest who was serving along with Kudadad died after a long illness last year." Daniel stopped. He decided not to tell them that he could read on the face of the man who spoke with him how hard that loss hit him, and his suspicion that the remaining priest had been greatly tempted to use the device to save his friend. That temptation was, he guessed, the wedge that had allowed him to startle the priest out of the crucial information, and he expected it would also be the wedge that opened the wall for them to take the device away. He'd keep that to himself. No one needed to know the guilt he'd read in the man's eyes—and for something he obviously hadn't even done, just thought about doing.

"The priest is going to discuss it with the former high priest, but I think they'll give us the device. They know how dangerous it is," he summed up.

"Okay," Jack replied. "And we . . . give it to the Tok'ra?"

"They can do more with it than we can," Sam confirmed. "They had to cannibalize the first one entirely to make that anti-Kull-warrior-weapon, and they may be able to put another one to good use too."

"No sarcophaguses lying around here anywhere?" Jack looked around as if he would see one out in the square.

"No, Jack. They've never even heard of them."

"You described them in case. . . ?"

"In case they use a different word? Of course. There aren't any. I think they'd have told me." I think the second priest would still be alive if there were, Daniel added mentally.

Now it was definitely growing late, and the stalls were all closing up for the night. A woman approached to invite them to dinner. "We're staying, right, Jack?" Daniel asked hopefully.

Jack went off to the Gate to tell Hammond they were spending the night; he seemed quite glad to get out of the little square.

*****

Their hosts for dinner were different than their hosts for lunch and the midday nap, but the hospitality Daniel had already known from Egypt and Abydos was the same. Despite the distances between the two cultures on Earth, and the many years of separate development on other planets, the architecture and culture made Daniel feel at home, and he kept forgetting to translate for the others, so caught up was he in the conversations. They talked mostly about everyday life, about feeding animals and trying to grow enough food in the rocky, often dry soil. They had made some amazing innovations, including that sophisticated hydraulic and irrigation system. They had a wider range of animals than most Goa'uld planets did, and almost all sounded like Earth animals; Daniel wondered if Telchak or someone else had brought the animals, even the predators, along with the people.

But the most astounding thing was that they had mastages. He'd never seen them anywhere but Abydos, and so he'd assumed there were none left anywhere now. The people happily assured him that they had many of the large animals, and there were offers to show him to the stables tomorrow. He declined politely. This place brought too many memories back as it was. And the smell of mastages was not actually among his favorite memories of Abydos; he really didn't need a refresher on that one.

Full dark was upon them well before they finished eating. The room had gotten warm from the many guests, as not only the host family but many others had come to eat with them, and Daniel excused himself politely to step outside for some air. As he expected, the air outside had cooled greatly since they'd gone in. The stars shone clearly in a sky with no light pollution, and as he turned to look around him, he caught sight of a satellite. It must be closer or bigger than Earth's moon; it was about the size of his thumbnail would look if he held his arm all the way in front of him.

He wondered if they had other moons that would appear later in the night. He rather hoped they didn't; that would be too much like Abydos. He felt fairly certain he should be glad for his family: Skaara and Kasuf, and the more distant relations and friends, had suffered enough the last few years. And Skaara was _happy_ when Jack had seen him last. They were all at peace. But while he didn't deny their happiness, he selfishly couldn't be happy himself when he thought of Abydos, his second home, a home to which he could never return now. He couldn't even visit Sha're's grave.

"You okay?"

Jack's appearance outside made him realize that he'd been outside a little too long for politeness, especially as his friends didn't speak the language. "Sorry."

Jack waved a hand, but in the dim light, with candles burning behind Jack, he couldn't tell if it was to dismiss his apology or to indicate the world around them. "Familiar?"

"Yeah."

After a long hesitation, Jack asked, "Is that good or bad?"

But Daniel realized people were getting up inside the house and saying what must be their goodbyes, and he went back in to say goodbye to those who were leaving the house, where they had been told they would spend the night. Conveniently, that let him dodge Jack's question. He wasn't sure what the answer was. Both, if he was honest, he supposed.

After other guests had left, the team was allowed choice sleeping spots on the roof. They conferred briefly, and Daniel finally had a chance to tell them that the priest had hoped they'd make a decision about the device that evening and would have an answer to give Daniel in the morning.

"What will they tell their people?" Sam wanted to know.

"I don't know," Daniel admitted.

*****

The air was cool in the morning, but Daniel knew that would change soon. After leaving a very red-faced Sam, who had obviously not used enough SPF 60, he returned to the garden by the ziggurat. He was surprised to find no one there. After radioing Jack to alert him to the situation, he settled down on a bench to wait, admiring the gardens. Even with water scarce, they cultivated this beautiful space by the house for their god. The air smelled of jasmine and another scent Daniel couldn't quite identify. There were many little purple flowers on runners throughout the garden; he wondered if that was the source of the dye used to paint the top tier of the ziggurat violet.

He was walking through the garden, carefully fingering plants and trying to figure out which were native to Earth and which weren't, when he finally heard footsteps. He turned to greet the priest with whom he had spent so much time the day before, Kudadad.

Daniel was very surprised to find Kudadad dusty and more than a little scratched. Behind him trudged the two acolytes Daniel had met the afternoon before, Jamsheed and Farnam, after Jack had left. Both were in their early to mid-teens, and they were even dustier and more scraped. A couple of even smaller boys followed behind, laughing at something. The scribes in training that Kudadad had mentioned?

Daniel greeted the priest, and Kudadad responded with embarrassment. He motioned the boys to wait, and then he gestured for Daniel to sit on the bench and sat down beside him.

Daniel was still having occasional problems with the language, but Kudadad conveyed easily that the priests had reached a decision: the _herad_ was too dangerous to keep. In fact, they wanted to take action immediately. And that was why they looked the way they did.

"We rose before dawn," the priest said in his own language, gesturing to the two older boys, "and brought torches into the Temple. We"—the next bit eluded Daniel slightly, but it seemed to mean 'wanted' or 'tried to'—"remove the wall." He looked at Daniel expectantly.

Daniel smiled encouragingly. "It did not work?" he said, or hoped he said, in the man's dialect.

"We could not remove . . . the wall." There was a word Daniel didn't get in there; was that "part of" or "enough of" or "all of"? The man continued, "We need another man."

Daniel frowned. He had met what he thought of as the priest emeritus the previous day, but the man was bed-ridden; he could not even make it up the stairs to the Temple, let alone help tear down a wall. He briefly considered offering them C-4, but that would be very dangerous, especially if they had no expert there to supervise.

The priest had that expectant look again.

"Can you find another man?" Daniel asked finally.

"Why not you?"

"Me?" Daniel was stunned. "I am not a priest!"

"No, no," Kudadad said, adding something that might have been an expletive or simply "of course not." "I know you are not a priest."

"Well, then, how could I help?"

The priest frowned at him. Daniel thought long and hard and realized the main verb wasn't right; he hoped the one he'd used didn't mean anything bad. He tried again. "How can I help?"

"Can you not help with the wall?" The priest was increasingly bewildered.

"But I am not a priest!" Daniel waved his hands at the ziggurat towering over the garden. "I cannot go in there!"

The priest looked no less confused and queried further. Had the man asked him "why"? Or maybe "why not"?

Either way, Daniel finally hit on the crucial question: "You mean people other than priests can enter the temple?"

"Yes," said the priest simply. "How else would. . . ." Then the man's features cleared, and he actually laughed, sending small showers of what now looked more like plaster off his clothes. "You thought only priests could enter?"

"Yes," Daniel said. "The people on my world who built like you, who talked like you. . . ." He realized he'd lost control of the sentence and started again. "Those people only allowed priests to enter the temple itself."

Kudadad chuckled briefly. "Tel-Shak would not allow any but his priests or Jaffa to enter. In fact, he destroyed our great city when an acolyte approached unwanted. Khuda saved all, so all worship him in the temple that is now Khuda's. Only priests enter every day, but for harvest and planting, everyone makes a pilgrimage."

Daniel took a moment to work that out. "And can . . . can those who are not priests enter on other days?"

"Yes, though it is rare. Some enter at other times when they wish to make a special prayer. Come, you will help me." Kudadad rose and gestured for the acolytes to follow. They fell in after the priest and Daniel walked past, and the two youngest boys trailed along behind.

*****

Jack was nervous. He didn't like Daniel being off on his own for long. Yeah, there were no signs of danger or technology. But, of course, Carter had missed that damn device, though presumably because it was off. What if they'd missed other things?

Daniel had been fine when he'd left him alone yesterday, but now the priests were supposed be giving Daniel a very dangerous alien device, and they hadn't shown up. Daniel was waiting for them with no weapons, with his pack virtually empty so that he could wrap the device in a few thin blankets and carry it without anyone but the priests ever being the wiser. He had no weapons. The man wouldn't have brought a butter knife to the meeting if Jack had tried to give him one.

"Jack!" His radio sounded again just as he was about to contact Daniel. "You won't believe it!"

"They have an amazing history?"

"What? Well, of course, but that's not why. . . . The bad news is, they tried to take the wall down themselves, but they can't quite manage it. It's not as badly damaged as they thought." Daniel was panting just a little. It sounded like he was climbing stairs? "The _good_ news is that they're asking me to help!"

"Inside the temple?" Jack asked in surprise.

"Yeah! They're letting me in to help!—but, look, we're most of the way to the top now, and I'm going inside! I'll get to have a look around, get the device, and meet you guys . . . in a while. I don't know how long it will take us to get the wall down enough to get the device out."

"Need some help?" Jack asked.

"I don't think so," Daniel answered very quickly.

Probably afraid he'd try to blow things up if he were there, Jack thought. There seemed to be a lot of background noise, at least two other people talking, but Daniel continued to tell him that the priest thought one more man should be enough; space was limited, they had crowbars and other tools, and—apparently they reached the top, because Daniel started jabbering even faster and then said, "I'll call you back when I can."

 

"Every half hour," Jack specified. "And if you need any help—"

"Sure, Jack. Out."

And that was that. Jack went back to admiring the chalk drawings being done by two little girls whose mother had brought them to entertain the guests, apparently figuring that if they couldn't speak the language, they were about on a par with the kids. Well, that beat the hell out of pretending to converse with adults. Teal'c had managed to pick up some game involving a board and counters, and he was now playing it with an older boy. They seemed to be fine even if they couldn't understand a word the other was saying; neither spoke much anyway. Carter was being led around the marketplace by a woman a little younger than herself, and Jack was pretty sure she'd already traded away all her energy bars and would soon be pestering him for his. He had no idea what she was getting in return, except that he was damned sure it wasn't useful technology. But at least some of them were having fun. Even though that burn on Carter's face, neck, and hands looked pretty painful.

Jack was well into a game of Cat's Cradle with one of the little girls when the half hour expired. He waited until the yarn was back on her hands and held up a palm to signal a pause while he tried his radio with the other hand. "Daniel, I'm sure it's all fascinating, but how's it coming?"

Silence. The girl tried to grab Jack's hands and put them back in position for playing, but he shook his head. He pushed the radio button again. "Daniel, respond." Nothing.

He got to his feet, trying to smile at the girl and look apologetic at the same time. Teal'c was at his side before he could even look around for the Jaffa. "I can't reach Daniel on the radio. I think I'm going to take a stroll over there," O'Neill said with studied calm. He didn't want to alert the people that something was up. In fact, he felt reasonably confident nothing was up, except an archaeologist who forgot to emerge from hiding in a _really fascinating_ place to radio that he was all right.

Unfortunately, he couldn't avoid attention. Teal'c insisted on coming, and Carter was at their side before they could leave the square, demanding to know what was going on, and others were noticing their departure.

"Kids, I'm trying to be unobtrusive about this," O'Neill told them. "Let's not _all_ go. Teal'c," he said for at least the third time, " _please_ stay here. Carter, back to shopping."

"Shopping?" She seemed indignant. He wasn't sure why.

"Ah, ah! That's an _order_!"

"But—"

"Look, Daniel went into the temple," Jack said, wishing he'd thought to catch them up before it developed into a situation. "He was supposed to help them with the wall. It'll probably turn out something interfered with the signal, or he accidentally switched off his radio, or they thought the radio would offend their gods."

"God," Teal'c corrected.

"God. Back to shopping, Carter." But he glanced at her pack; he and Teal'c had left his at the house where they'd stayed last night, but she'd gone back for hers to get things to trade and to put her purchases in it. They'd kept their weapons with them, but the pack might be useful, and he really didn't want to go back for his. . . .

"O'Neill, if there has been an accident with the wall. . . ." Teal'c left the thought unfinished.

"Sir," Carter pointed out in an obviously reasonable tone of voice, "it's too late to pretend that everything is fine, so I may as well go."

Jack hesitated, but he was worried. And if nothing had gone wrong, a little extra embarrassment might teach Daniel to keep better contact. Although he was probably a little old to retrain at this point. "Fine," O'Neill conceded. "Let's just go." He muttered loudly enough for Carter and Teal'c to hear, "Everything probably _is_ fine, except for the health of a certain archaeologist when I _remind_ him about radio checks."

"Daniel?" Carter tried her radio. "Daniel, respond." What, did she think he hadn't tried enough?

There must have been a dozen people around them as they started through the crowded town to the ziggurat, and others joined the procession along the way. A lot of conversation was going on around them, but as O'Neill couldn't understand any of it, he blocked it out. The heat was already oppressive, though it wasn't even lunchtime yet around here, and the sweat trickling down his back itched, even though he had left his pack behind and was only carrying his weapon.

As they approached the tall, stepped structure several minutes later, they could see a couple of people limping down the stairs. Neither looked like Daniel, though one was carrying something. Jack began to run, and his team followed immediately, with the some of the natives keeping up and others falling behind as they made their way through the ruins.

They reached the foot of the temple moments before the little group that was descending did. The priest that Daniel had been talking to yesterday was dirty, bloodied, and pale. He sat down on the lowest step and put his head in his hands. Behind him came a teenager with a little boy in his arms. The boy had blood all over his face, from a cut in his temple, and was unconscious.

A woman suddenly cried out and ran towards the figures. Jack wasn't sure if they'd met her already or not; they seemed to have met everyone in the whole village. Daniel would remember. . . . Soon she was jabbering at the teenager. The teen responded quickly and with a note of fear in his voice, but one word, repeated, caught Jack's attention. "Daniyal," he said in the midst of many other words.

"What's that about Daniel?" O'Neill asked his teammates. "Was he hurt too?"

Teal'c frowned in concentration while the woman took the limp boy from the teenager. She set him gently on the step by the old priest; Carter was at her side in a flash with the med kit. Thank God she'd had her pack with her. Soon the two women were cleaning the blood, dirt, and even small chunks of brick off the boy's face and out of his hair.

Teal'c and Jack were still concentrating on what the teenager and now the priest were trying to tell him, which seemed to include Daniel's name over and over, when Carter gasped.

"Oh, my God!" She looked up at her teammates, her face stricken. "His . . . his hair is blond, and his eyes are blue!" She turned back to the boy, pressing a cloth to the wound to stop the bleeding. His eyes had opened a little; he looked completely dazed, unfocused, but Carter was clearly right about his coloring.

The woman looked at her and said something in a tone that didn't sound very nice.

Jack looked around at the small crowd, confirming what he already knew. They all had dark hair and brown eyes. Everyone they'd seen had dark hair and brown eyes, which wasn't unusual; Abydos had been the same. Most planets, in fact, seemed to have a single ethnic group, and therefore not a wide assortment of colors and features.

"Carter, you want to tell me what this means?" he asked evenly, though he was afraid he already knew the answer.

"What if," her voice trembled a little as she kept pressure on the boy's wound, "what if the device went off, either by accident or because someone activated it, and Daniel—look, we've seen nanites that can make you age at a tremendously fast rate, and when those were removed, you not only _stopped_ aging, you went back to the age you'd been before you got the nanites. We've seen people exchange bodies; you yourself were cloned, and—"

"Cut to the chase!" O'Neill shouted.

"What if _this_ is Daniel?"

"Daniyal," echoed the woman. She pointed at the boy, and more words followed that they didn't understand. She was shouting again. Carter continued cleaning up the wound and the area around it. The boy's eyes were closed again and he wasn't moving.

Daniel, O'Neill corrected himself. Daniel wasn't moving.


	3. Chapter 3

"O'Neill," Teal'c said, "I believe she blames us for what has happened."

"Ya think?" Jack snapped. He rubbed his forehead.

"I mean," Carter continued, "if the device has this property, that would explain the Fountain of Youth legends. Reanimating alone might not be enough. Did the kidnapper who came back to life and came after Daniel get younger?"

"No," he had to answer.

"Would you know for certain?" Teal'c asked.

Damn. He hadn't thought of that. Daniel hadn't said anything about the man having gotten younger, but Daniel hadn't talked about much, and he'd lost his glasses God knows how long before Jack found him. He might not even have noticed. Besides, Daniel had given an unusually terse debriefing, except to issue an unneeded defense of Bill Lee until Jack convinced him that he didn't blame the scientist for talking—giving enough information to keep the group from killing either prisoner. He had never given a whole lot of details.

"Zal!" the woman shouted. She turned to Sam and let loose another string of words that included "Daniyal" more than once. Then she turned to the boy again and spoke more soothingly, but he didn't respond, and his eyes slipped closed again.

"So maybe one function just heals injury, but another actually makes you younger," Carter went on. "Or maybe . . . the man who went after Daniel _was_ younger, but you didn't realize. I don't know that an autopsy could even detect something like that." She finished cleaning up the boy's temple and bandaged the wound.

"Well, he sure as hell wasn't five years old when he came after us with weapons!"

"Daniel?" She gently touched the boy's face, but she had no more success getting him to open his eyes than the woman had been having.

"Did they even get the goddamn device out of there?" O'Neill asked in frustration. The people who knew the answer couldn't tell him. None of them were carrying it, though, and Daniel's pack was not in evidence.

A few people had been assisting the priest, and now he stood up, shakily, with a young man supporting him by the elbow. "Daniyal," the priest said, and he turned and pointed to the top of the structure. He turned back to O'Neill and rattled off some words that were meaningless to him, but the gestures were unmistakable. He held up his left hand, palm flat and vertical, and then folded it over and pointed to his injuries and the boy's.

"The wall fell on them. On you." Jack repeated. The man looked at him. "Oh, God," he muttered to himself; he had said he was never going to do mime in front of his team again. But there was no choice. He mimed "wall," putting up an invisible wall between the priest and himself, and was a little gratified when he thought he saw a light of understanding in the man's eyes. Then he mimed ducking and covering his head from the crumbling of the invisible wall. He was glad that the other two members of the team didn't take the opportunity to mock his talents, but he supposed they weren't in the mood for that any more than he was.

The priest became excited and nodded in an odd way O'Neill had seen before, both on Abydos and here, with a little jerk to the side. "Okay, so the wall fell on you guys. And Daniel was hurt."

Suddenly a little wail came from below, where Carter was speaking soothingly, and O'Neill hunkered down to see better. The boy's eyes were open again, and he had made the small sound, but he seemed unfocused and didn't repeat it.

"And then Daniel turned into this boy?" O'Neill said, pointing.

The priest stared at him for a moment and then replied, of course with something incomprehensible. Then the man mimed ducking away from the wall, and hunched over, nearly losing his balance because he was still shaking from his own injuries and fear, and pointed to the boy. He made digging motions with his hands, and he said "Daniyal" and a few other words.

"I think that's our answer, sir," Carter confirmed. "Daniel turned into this boy when the wall fell on him."

The woman was turning the boy's face to look at her own. When his eyes closed again, she made a sound of alarm and began yelling at Carter some more. The woman then picked up one of Carter's discarded wipes and pointed to the wipe, the bandage, and then Carter, saying things they couldn't understand.

"I think she wants to know if I can do more for him, sir," Carter guessed—Jack was sure it was just guessing.

"How the hell do I know?" he yelled. "We're not messing around with that device when he's like this!" No, they couldn't subject Daniel to that again. No telling what might happen. It was bad enough he'd already been exposed. He hadn't shown any violent tendencies afterwards, but his exposure back on Earth had apparently been brief, and they couldn't afford to mess around. Not if they could avoid it.

"Right," Carter replied. "His pupils are uneven, though they're starting to react a little to light. He doesn't seem to be responding to voices, really, and he doesn't act like he recognizes _anyone_. I wonder—if he has regressed to when he was, say, five, did he lose all the memories he's gained since then?"

"Zal," the woman said, rubbing the boy's forehead gently. She then took Carter's hands and put them gingerly around the boy with what could only be a plea for help.

"We'll take care of him," Carter said sincerely. "Sir? I was thinking maybe we should take him back to Janet. He's got a serious concussion, at least, maybe even a skull fracture. We need to get that taken care of before anything else."

Carter saw his gaze returning to the top of the ziggurat and added, "I'm sure we'll need the device to reverse the process, sir, but I think we'd better treat his injuries—let Janet treat his injuries—in a more conventional way." He could read the concern on her face as well.

"We'll do everything we can for him," Carter said to the woman.

Carter started to pick the boy up, but Teal'c stepped in and took him. He could carry the boy more easily, and it was a good half-hour walk to the Stargate.

The priest grabbed Jack's arm suddenly and asked a question. He mimed digging and said something about Daniel and the _herad_.

"You need help digging out?" The man nodded as Jack repeated the gesture. "The device is still up there?" He pointed up, and the man nodded again. "Look, we've got equipment—full-sized shovels," he mimed again, "hard hats"—he tried to show that one but saw no sign of recognition—"all kinds of stuff. We'll come back and help. Or give you equipment to use, if you don't want us up there. Promise." He sighed. "We're going to the Stargate, the Chappa'ai"—okay, Chappa'ai worked for them—"to bring shovels and other things to help dig _safely_. So no one else gets hurt, okay?" He remembered the woman kept saying "zal" and wondered if that meant "hurt." "No more zal, okay? Safe this time."

The priest nodded and smiled. Then he said something else. Jack thought it might have ended with some kind of thanks, from the tone of voice, but he wasn't sure. Jack realized they'd been at the steps of the ziggurat, and the man had never raised any objections to all their weapons. He must be worried.

They started towards to the Stargate. The priest tried to join them, but his legs folded up under him, and others helped him to sit and stayed with him. Ten people accompanied them to the Stargate, though. The woman who had run to Daniel hovered around them and kept talking, and she seemed to be expressing gratitude.

The boy stirred occasionally in Teal'c's arms, but he never even looked around. That was so not like Daniel, even as a kid, Jack was sure, that he was seriously worried. He kept those feelings to himself, though.

Carter dialed. The woman touched Daniel's face gently and said a few words, including "zal"; she must be reassuring him that they'd take care of his injuries. The boy finally turned his head towards the touch and smiled a little, shyly. Jack found himself touched by her concern.

When the Gate opened, everyone jumped back, even though all the natives had stayed well back anyway, except for the one woman, who stayed near Teal'c and the boy—Daniel, he corrected himself again. They smiled a goodbye to the woman, who seemed for a moment about to come after them, and they went through the Gate.

Carter went first and was already calling for a medic when Jack followed Teal'c through.

Hammond came down from the control room to meet them. He looked at the four and then at Jack. "Where's Doctor Jackson, Colonel? And who is this?"

Jack took a deep breath. "This, it seems, _is_ Daniel." He decided he needed another deep breath. "Like I said last night, sir, they have a Telchak device. And apparently. . . ."

"Something went wrong." Hammond's voice was heavy with resignation. "Right. Well, Doctor Frasier's team should be here any minute now—but what exactly happened?"

Jack was still trying to figure out how to explain why Daniel had been tearing down a wall alone with a priest and an acolyte or two when Janet Frasier and her people rushed in with a gurney.

"This is my patient?" Frasier's eyebrows went up as Teal'c laid him gently on the gurney. "And Sam, you look like you need some treatment too." She didn't wait for any answers before she added, "Where's Daniel?" looking around the room quickly. "Was he hurt, too?"

O'Neill let Carter handle it this time. "Janet, we think. . . . This _is_ Daniel. You know Telchak's device, the reanimator?" At the doctor's nod, she continued. "Well, they had one they didn't want anymore, and Daniel said we'd take it off their hands." Guilt was written all over her face, though Jack wasn't sure why; it hadn't been _her_ idea. "Long story short," Carter concluded, "apparently the wall fell on them, and I guess the device was triggered, and . . . I guess we know why they called it the Fountain of Youth."

There was a long pause before Janet responded, "You _are_ serious. Oh, my God." She bent over the boy, who blinked at her.

Carter pulled herself together. "The accident must have happened a good forty minutes ago, and he's been in and out. He hasn't said a word yet, and he's hardly even focused on our faces. He hasn't shown any signs of recognizing us, and we're afraid that maybe he only remembers things from when he was five."

"Ohhh." Janet was obviously not happy with the news, but it could be worse, Jack reflected. She turned to give directions to her team, and they took the gurney out of the Gateroom, but not before Janet started to lecture Carter on proper precautions from the sun.

"Sir," Jack said, remembering the General behind him. "As I reported initially, we've had some language trouble there. Only Daniel could communicate. At all. And obviously, he's not up to translating right now. But apparently the device was caught in the cave-in too, and I said we'd bring some equipment back to dig. And maybe another team to help."

The General nodded. "How bad was the accident? Were others hurt?"

O'Neill looked over the General's shoulder. "To be honest, sir, I should have checked more before we came back. But we were worried about Daniel." He glanced back at Hammond.

"Understandable." Hammond nodded. Jack felt a little relief at that. He still should have gone up, though.

"A priest was kind of banged up and pretty shaky, but he seemed okay; he didn't ask for any help. At least, not medical help. As far as I know. He _did_ seem to want some help digging out. And of course now I realize I should have checked out the site of the cave-in itself, but it was a long set of stairs away—"

"—and you had to get Doctor Jackson back here as soon as possible," Hammond finished the thought.

"Yeah. I figure we're going to need the device to reverse this—whatever it is. Assuming it _can_ be reversed, and that the thing wasn't damaged too badly. He wasn't just _shrunk_ ," Jack muttered to himself at the end. "Maybe send some archaeologists back with us. And more scientists." But not Bill Lee, he added mentally. Lee didn't need that. He was still avoiding Jack's eyes, even at lunch yesterday. He probably thought Jack blamed him for giving up information, though Jack had made a point of telling him that the men he gave it to were all dead, and the important thing was that he and Daniel survived. "But first—"

"Go to the infirmary. You need a check-over anyway, and I'm sure you want to see how Doctor Jackson is doing." Hammond managed to smile a little. "You always did call him one of your 'kids.'"

"I didn't mean it literally." Jack forced a smile of his own, but soon he was on his way to the infirmary.

He heard a wail almost as soon as he got off the elevator and ran towards it. A nurse was just finishing smearing some weird white cream on Carter's face, neck, and the backs of her hands. Carter was sitting on the bed next to the boy—Daniel—and trying awkwardly to reassure and comfort him while they cleaned him up. She might be more reassuring if she didn't look like she'd put on whiteface for some way un-PC performance.

Janet looked up from her own attempts to calm him and said, "Well, he's obviously more alert, sir."

Jack grinned at the boy. "Has he said anything yet?"

"Not a word!" Sam said anxiously. "He doesn't even seem to respond to his name!"

"Huh." Jack squatted down to make better eye contact with Daniel and regretted it as his knees locked. Now he'd be stuck there for a while. Better make the best of it. "How about Danny? Dannyboy? Space Monkey?" Both Carter and Teal'c were about to cut him off, so he switched to, "Daniel? I know you don't seem to recognize anyone or anything, but you're safe here."

The boy didn't say a word, but he seemed to be focused on Jack's face, and he hadn't wailed again since Jack had walked in.

"We're all friends here. Now you got a boo-boo, but the Doc here's gonna take care of you. You'll be fine."

The big blue eyes seemed to express faith in Jack even though Daniel remained silent. Sam moved a little further away with a look of gratitude that she wasn't needed.

"That's very good, sir," said Janet quietly as she finished removing the makeshift bandage from his forehead and set to work cleaning the wound. "I'd really like to get an MRI so I can see what's going on in there, though. I need to look for physical damage. It could, of course, be shock that's keeping him so quiet. But I don't like it."

"Do we even know if he spoke English when he was this age?" Sam asked.

"Of course he spoke English, Carter," Jack said, being careful with his tone so he didn't startle Daniel. "His parents were both American."

"Yes, sir. But what would he speak _most_? I mean, he's said he was always out on digs with his parents, and I don't think most of the people—"

"Carter," he said pleasantly, smiling at Daniel, "do you _always_ have to argue?"

"No, sir," she replied immediately, and then she shut her mouth.

"Hammond's seeing which archaeologists are available to help us dig out the site," Jack said conversationally. It didn't seem to matter what he said; Daniel kept his eyes glued on his face. That made him feel better. Maybe there was some flicker of recognition. "We'll go back as soon as they're ready, I guess, but if we can help reassure him while you're doing your scans, Doc, we'll do that."

"That would probably help," said Janet. She had already waved off at least one nurse and was insisting on doing everything herself, Jack noticed.

"Is that—glue?" he asked, seeing something in her hands that was not the normal suture kit.

"Yes, sir. Surgical glue. Normally, I'd use stitches, but I think we'll have enough trauma when I try to get him in the scanner, not to mention what he's already been through. I thought this might be easier."

"Good idea," said Carter.

"Okay," Frasier said, putting down the glue. She looked around at them. "Colonel, maybe you could stay to help reassure him. But I think we're going to need to get these clothes off, and I don't think he needs an audience." She looked at Carter and Teal'c.

"Wait—how _did_ he get these clothes?" Carter suddenly wondered.

"He was saying last night he'd rather wear their robes than BDUs," Jack answered, remembering how wistful Daniel had looked as they settled in on the roof for the night. He slid carefully out of the crouch to sit on the edge of the bed. It was easier than getting up entirely, but his knees still weren't happy. "I wouldn't be surprised if he put them on to go into the ziggurat."

"He has no footwear," Teal'c observed.

"But they—that almost looks like it fits . . . _him_ ," Sam added.

Jack wasn't certain; the robe was so torn and shapeless he couldn't tell, but it _did_ look a little small for Daniel, who was nearly as tall as Jack and even a little broader in the shoulders.

"You don't think . . . it doesn't make sense that the clothes would shrink with him, does it, sir? I mean, a sarcophagus doesn't mend rips in your clothes, right?"

"Well, we didn't think the device would do _this_ to him, now did we?" Jack was getting annoyed. The downside to working with geniuses: they always had to make things even more complicated than they already were.

"Could they have put him in these clothes before they brought him to you?" Frasier asked, her hand on the privacy curtain.

"They brought him out of the cave-in, as far as I know," Jack replied, even as he realized that there was a lot he _didn't_ know. "I don't think they'd take time to do that! I mean, they didn't even bandage his face!"

"Besides, the clothes are filthy," Carter added helpfully. She gasped. "You don't think they were _experimenting_ on him and then faked or created an accident to cover what they'd done?"

Janet gave Carter a funny look, which made Jack feel better; for a moment there, he'd wondered whether the Major was too paranoid or he wasn't paranoid enough. "Well, we've taken a blood sample for tests, so we'll know for certain if it's Daniel Jackson or not." She moved to close the curtain, and the other two had to stand back. "We will, of course, also look for anything else unusual, such as signs that he was drugged." The curtain now surrounded them. "But even the drug tests will take a couple of hours, and DNA testing takes longer."

Carter's voice came through. "Oh! Maybe they tore off the bottom of the robes because they were caught on or under something, and so they just _look_ like they fit him now." Sure enough, the bottom hem was jagged.

"Yeah," Jack couldn't help adding. "If it was anybody else, I might wonder, but only Daniel could get into a mess like this."

Daniel flinched and cowered as Frasier and Lt. Coleman cut his clothing off; at Jack's suggestion, she'd found a male nurse to help, but Janet insisted she needed to be there in case any new injuries were uncovered. Jack wondered if she would have felt that way if the boy weren't Daniel.

Daniel had a number of bruises, especially on his left side, and Janet decided to start small, with x-rays, and work their way up to the MRI, which could be terrifying. "We've had a few people here briefly who had panic attacks in it," she confided, though of course she didn't give any names.

Jack smiled. "Briefly?"

"Well, they had to be reassigned; we couldn't keep people who had to be sedated to go through the standard post-mission exams." Janet paused. "The worst was the one who got in the machine and started singing, 'Yellow Submarine.' Said it helped him stay calm."

"Made it kind of hard to get good images, didn't it?" Jack grinned.

"He had one of the worst voices I have ever heard," Janet replied. "The tech told me I could have him at the SGC or her on my staff, but not both. The choice was clear."

Daniel eagerly slipped on the smallest scrubs they had, with Coleman helping him to cuff the pant legs so that he wouldn't be tripping—assuming they ever let him off the gurney, Jack thought.

Janet opened the curtain to reveal Carter and Teal'c exactly where they'd been before, except that Carter was now leaning against the wall. Teal'c hadn't moved a muscle. "I'm not sure we need _all_ of you," Janet started, but Sam was already moving to sit on the bed next to Daniel. He gave her a shy smile, and Janet gave up immediately.

"Do you think he recognizes us?" Sam smiled back at him. "I mean, we _do_ seem to calm him down. Especially the Colonel."

Jack felt a warmth and gratitude for that idea. He'd wondered it himself but been afraid to say. Maybe Daniel still recognized them in some way. They _would_ get him back, in any case. They always did.

"No telling. Maybe it's just your reassuring manner," Janet added lightly. "We're taking him to radiology," she warned them. "And obviously you can't go in with him."

"We'll leave during x-rays," Carter assured her, "but don't you think he'll need somebody with him? I mean, he has to lie on a cold table, there's big pieces of equipment moving around him. . . ."

"Fine." Janet held up her hands in surrender.

And so they all went off to radiology. Jack was glad to see Daniel looking around with great curiosity as they took the gurney slowly through the hall to the x-ray room, but he wished he'd say something. He was quite unnaturally quiet.

Then the boy said, "Mama?" as he continued to look around. Jack wanted to be relieved his friend could still talk, but his heart sank. What could they possibly tell him?

"Look," he said, "your mom isn't here. We're going to do what we can to help you, but you'll just have to trust us for a while."

No response; Daniel continued to look around the corridor, not at Jack. He stopped the gurney, grabbed Daniel's chin carefully, and turned it slowly and gently to him. He didn't seem surprised or struggle. Jack repeated his words. Daniel watched his lips intently.

"Mama," he repeated softly.

"Janet?" Carter asked from her place in the procession, voicing the thought that Jack had only begun to form. "Could his hearing have been damaged?"

Jack gave Daniel a quick smile and nod, straightened up, and they were on their way again.

"I'll add that to the list of things to check," Janet said calmly. "Did the cave-in cause a loud noise? It could just be temporary."

"We weren't there," Carter reminded her miserably.

"I heard nothing," Teal'c added, "but we were some distance away and among many people at the time it must have happened."

"Mm," Janet said. Jack hated that sound, especially coming from a doctor. He wanted answers, even though he knew it was too soon for her to have them.

They got Daniel settled on the cold, hard table. He looked very nervous, especially as they backed away with words meant to reassure but which he apparently couldn't hear. Carter's huge smile might have been more frightening than reassuring, too; Daniel had always been sensitive to insincerity. Jack figured that was probably normal for someone who'd spent half his childhood with foster families. But maybe he was born that way.

As they waited outside during x-rays—Carter anxiously, Teal'c stoically, and Jack telling himself he looked unconcerned—Carter began to worry aloud about whether Daniel could be changed back. "I mean, it's not even safe to experiment with him; if we accidentally take a few more years off, he . . . won't have any left!"

Jack really didn't want to hear that right now. Obviously they couldn't endanger Daniel further, but it just wasn't right to leave him like this and pretend it was for his own safety. He couldn't be happy like this, could he? Did he have any sense that he'd been different before?

"You may test it on me," Teal'c offered, his voice calm even as Jack knew it was not a rational proposal.

"Then how are we going to know it worked?" Jack demanded. "It's not like dating a tree! We can't take a slice and determine how old you are."

Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "DanielJackson appears to have lost his memories from all the years after this age. If I lose my memories—"

"If that happens, then we'll suddenly have the First Prime of Apophis back, trying to kill the Taur'i scum!" Jack shot back. Yet another stupid idea from the people who brought you . . . the Jaffa Revenge Thing and the incredible exploding sun.

"I'd have to agree, Teal'c," Carter said reluctantly after a moment. "Besides, it's only a theory that he's lost those memories. He may simply be in shock."

"'Mama'?" quoted Jack in exasperation.

"Sir, we don't know that he's lost all those memories permanently; he may be thoroughly confused and have very little memory at all, with 'mama' being one of the very earliest words most kids learn, or. . . ."

She was clutching at straws. He understood why, but it wasn't helping. "Carter."

"Well, in any case, I don't think experimenting on Teal'c would be helpful, sir. Sorry, Teal'c, but your physiology may interact with the device differently anyway."

Jack had served with Carter too long not to see the wheels turning in her head and guess where this was going. "Carter, we'll get him back. As he was."

"But, sir. . . ."

"No. We're not even going to consider otherwise. Not until _I_ say so." If he could order her not to think, he'd do so, but he knew it didn't work. He'd tried once or twice. For that matter, he wished he could order himself not to think. There were _lots_ of times that would have been useful.

"For how long?" Carter was suddenly angry at him. "How long do we leave him in limbo?"

Why the hell was she mad at _him_? Because he told her when her plans were stupid? Somebody had to! "Well, let's see!" O'Neill could do angry too. In fact, he was very good at angry. He deliberately checked his watch even though he already knew how long it had been. "It's been almost eighty minutes now. Do you think another hour or two is too long?"

"O'Neill," said Teal'c with disapproval. Jack wasn't sure how much of that was directed at him and how much at Carter. "It may take a few days."

"Well, he's staying with us," Jack said flatly. This whole situation was only temporary, even if they didn't know how long it would last. "I don't care how long it takes. We're _not_ putting him into some. . . ."

"Orphanage?" Carter hit home.

He was trying so hard not even to _think_ that word. They couldn't reasonably do that anyway, so why bring it up? "Why do you have to do that?" he demanded. Did she feel she had to take Daniel's place at annoying him?

"Do what?" Carter added belatedly, "Sir."

"I believe this is unproductive," Teal'c interrupted. "It would clearly not be safe to release DanielJackson from our custody until we know what has happened and whether his condition is stable."

"What he said!" Jack added forcefully. Carter had only said "orphanage" to score points in some game Jack didn't even understand. Maybe she was mad at him because Daniel wasn't in any shape to be mad at. If anyone was at fault, it was Daniel, who never knew when to ask for help. . . . No, that wasn't helpful either.

Janet emerged from the X-ray room, where she had been positioning Daniel and taking refuge with the technician in the shielded area for the actual photos. "You can go in," she told them. "The technician and I will review the x-rays and decide if we need more."

Daniel smiled at seeing them again and sat up—too fast, as they could tell from the color draining rapidly from his face. Jack ran to grab his shoulders to ease him back down, but somehow Teal'c beat him to it, and Carter stumbled into his back trying to get there.

"Sorry, sir," she mumbled.

Daniel laughed unexpectedly, a quiet little laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.

"Great! Now he thinks we're the Three Stooges!" But Jack was very pleased to see some glimpse of his friend's character.

Sam told him to sit up slowly next time, but Teal'c's hand resting gently on his chest made it clear that next time wouldn't be for a few minutes. Daniel closed his eyes, and all three of them went immediately to touch him; he wasn't supposed to sleep yet.

"DanielJackson, you must remain alert," Teal'c said in a soothing voice. As Teal'c shifted his hand to touch Daniel's cheek, the boy looked at his face and smiled. He _must_ recognize them at some level; kids didn't just up and give Teal'c a smile.

Telling him to stay alert wasn't going to help, though. "Could we give him something to play with?" Jack asked, looking around.

"Like a bag of saline?" he thought he heard very quietly.

"Carter, was that a suggestion?"

"Uh, no, sir."

"Good." He fumbled around in his pockets.

His yo-yo was in his office, as were his so-called executive sculptures and that little Zen garden that Daniel had given him a couple of years back: a plastic dish of sand with a tiny rake and a couple of pebbles. He had made sure that before the next time Daniel came past his office, he'd put a small piece of Astroturf in one corner, hidden the rake, and dropped a little white BB in. "Sand trap," he'd explained, to Daniel's annoyance.

"Jack, it's for relaxation! It's supposed to be. . . ."

"Golf is relaxing!" Of course, that hadn't exactly taught Daniel to stop giving him joke gifts. Maybe if he didn't give Daniel so many, Daniel would stop. . . .

"Sir?" Damn. Carter had seen his smile come and go.

"Nothing. Oh, look, a pen!" He _did_ have one of those in his pockets, though he couldn't remember putting it there. "You _love_ pens!" He pulled it out and showed it to the boy. "See? You click, and the point comes out. You click again, and it goes away." He demonstrated as he spoke, but Daniel looked at his face instead of the pen. He pointed to the pen, clicked it a couple more times, and finally succeeded in directing the boy's eyes there. Daniel happily took the pen and clicked it in and out.

"Colonel?" Janet entered the room. "It looks good. The bruises must hurt, but there's no damage to the bones nor any sign of internal injury to his chest or abdomen."

"Great." Jack stuck his hands in his pockets, bracing for the next part.

"Now the MRI," Frasier said.

"Now the MRI," Jack echoed.

It was a short trip, and again Daniel looked around eagerly: at the pipes hanging from the ceiling above, at the other nurse they passed, at the lines on the floor, into doorways. They got him settled fairly easily on the MRI trolley. Janet took the pen away gently, and Jack promised he could have it back when he was done. He wasn't sure Daniel understood, but he did _look_ reassured.

"It's times like these I wish we had an open scanner," Janet said.

"DanielJackson has never suffered from claustrophobia," Teal'c said confidently.

"But it _vibrates_ ," Carter said, eying it as if it were the enemy, "and it's _loud_. I mean, even if he can't _hear_ it, he'll feel—"

"Ever the optimist." That earned him a glare from his 2IC. Good. She could _stay_ mad at him, for all he cared, as long as they got Daniel through this okay. Carter looking afraid of the machine herself was not going to help Daniel.

"We're going to turn on the machine and move him in very slowly," Janet said. She put a standard pair of headphones on Daniel, who seemed quite curious about them. "It wouldn't do to damage his hearing further." She sighed a little. "We should leave before the actual scans, but I want to get him as calm as we can."

The machine was already running, making whooshing sounds like a huge pair of lungs. Something that cooled it, Jack remembered. He also remembered how loud it had been in the old days, before they decided everyone should wear earplugs or headphones for the scan.

Daniel looked alarmed. Carter took his hand and gave him another huge smile. "It's okay!" she declared loudly. "Think of it . . . like a ride. Like at a carnival."

"That's a big help," Jack muttered. He meant to say it to himself, but they were in such close quarters around the trolley that no one could miss it. He thus earned himself two or three more glares.

"Positive thinking?" Carter couldn't help herself, apparently. "Sir?"

Janet looked around at the three of them. "Let's all try to look relaxed."

Jack put on a smile that he hoped didn't look too false and looked down at Daniel while he jibed loudly back at Carter, "And you're a role model of positive thinking? Well, how's this?" He turned an even brighter smile on the doc and said, "Think Cassie would like a little brother?"

Janet's face flashed with surprise and anger for just a moment before she regained control and laughed an obviously forced laugh. "You think we can't help Daniel, sir?"

"We've been talking about . . . contingency plans," Carter called out guiltily. O'Neill wasn't sure what the hell she felt guilty about now.

"Oh." That changed things apparently, because Janet added, "I suppose it couldn't hurt. Just to be prepared in case. . . . It might be a few days before we get this figured out."

Something inside Jack went a little colder at that. Janet wasn't thinking only about "a few days." For God's sake, he could at least be honest with himself: none of them were thinking about just a few days, but: what if he _is_ stuck this way?

Well, at least they weren't looking to Jack to . . . adopt him. He'd had his shot at being a Dad. Shot being the operative. . . . Not again. Uncle? Now that he could handle.

Janet smiled down at Daniel again. "Now we're going to send you a little ways into the machine."

Jack patted Daniel's ankle reassuringly. He smiled back. Janet waved to indicate they were just going to step outside.

"We just don't want him to be with people he doesn't know while. . . ." Carter went on as they stepped out. They stood behind the technician to watch through the window.

Daniel had gone into the machine just fine. But as soon as they heard the _thunk-thunk-thunk_ of the machine faintly, even through the heavy glass, the little body went diving out of the machine, feet first.

Jack, Carter, and Janet pretty much fell all over each other trying to get back into the room, and of course Teal'c stepped serenely around them to pick Daniel off the floor and comfort him. He was screaming, wordless expressions of terror. He'd flung off the headphones—whether deliberately or in his struggles, Jack wasn't certain. They all reassured him, touching him gently, while Janet yelled to Carter, "And they think girls scream."

"Hey! Who's this 'they'? I never said boys _don't_ scream," Jack said with a grin directed at Daniel. "In fact, I have first-hand experience!" His focus was all on Daniel, so he felt more than saw the sudden stiffness of the others. What, he couldn't refer to his own son? Okay, he didn't do it much, but it was not like he _never_ mentioned Charlie.

Daniel did seem to relax as they touched his arms and Jack ruffled his hair. Hair that seemed thicker than Daniel's, and a little longer. Was that odd? Maybe Daniel had had thicker, faster-growing hair when he was a kid. Charlie's hair had grown much faster than Jack or Sara's, after all.

Janet said soothingly, "It's okay, Daniel, honey! I'm sorry the big machine scares you. It's very noisy, isn't it?"

"Does baby talk help if he can't hear you?" Jack asked, but he knew the answer long before she fixed him with a momentary glare. He was really winning points with the people around him today.

"We'll give him a few minutes to calm down, and then we'll try again," Janet directed.


	4. Chapter 4

Daniel had vague impressions that he'd clawed his way toward consciousness earlier, but nothing was clear. He opened his eyes again and looked around. Where the hell was he? Why couldn't he remember where he was or how he'd gotten here? A voice reached him, reassuring him, but he couldn't make out the words at first.

Then he remembered that the words weren't English, or Abydonian, or. . . . This language had developed from Persian. Old Persian, as a matter of fact. As that came back, so did other memories. Oh, he was so dead. Jack had offered to help, and he'd turned him down before he even saw the wall they were to work on. Not that seeing it had changed his mind—as far as he could recall. He only dimly remembered entering the temple at all. So he had no idea what had gone wrong, but he knew Jack would not be pleased. And Teal'c would just look at him in sorrow and in guilt, sure that he should have insisted on helping. He would never blame Daniel. Daniel would rather deal with Jack's yelling than with Teal'c's assumption of guilt for his own stupid mistake.

He finally managed to focus on the silhouette beside him; realizing that it was just a silhouette, because the torches were behind the teenage boy, helped. The kid was asking him how he was.

"I'm, um," Daniel coughed a bit as dust continued to drift through the air around him, and then he remembered to switch out of English into the boy's own language. "I am . . . well." Well, that was a lie, but he didn't know how to say "okay" or "fine" in this language. Better. Better might do. "Better." He moved cautiously to sit up, and the teenager immediately supported him. Smart boy—Daniel quickly felt dizzy, but the boy helped him slide until his back was against a wall they _hadn't_ been trying to take down, and he rested a few moments.

"Jack!" he suddenly remembered. He tried to thumb his radio, but something was wrong. His arms and hands felt badly bruised, but it wasn't an injury that left him unable to use the radio, he realized after a bit of fumbling; the radio wasn't shaped right any longer. Pieces had broken off. God, that must have been a close call. Anything that could smash one of those radios could easily break bone; it must have hit him just right.

"Where are?" He remembered then that others had been there, and he didn't see them now. What were their names? He must have a concussion. "Khoda—Kudadad." I think I got that right, he thought. Yay, me.

The boy replied in rapid-fire Persian that made him dizzy again. "Slowly," he begged. Jamsheed, right? Or was this Farnam? He couldn't remember and decided to avoid using a name.

The boy tried again, much slower, but Daniel had to have him repeat a few words even so. Kudadad and Zal had been pretty banged up, but they had gone down to the base of the ziggurat—where Daniel's team had apparently taken Zal to get help. Two other boys had stayed up at the top, but outdoors, where they were safer.

"My . . . friends . . . took Zal and didn't come up here?" he asked. Oh. He must have told them yesterday that only priests could enter the ziggurat; maybe Jack had been paying attention, and surely Teal'c was. But no, that couldn't be right. They'd hardly honor someone else's religious sensitivities when they knew him to be in danger—even if he'd been conscious and wanted to stop them, he doubted he could have talked them out of it.

Or had he even told them only priests could come in? Could they have come in here, and he told them to take the boy for help? He would remember that, wouldn't he? And surely they'd at least have gotten him out of here. He wasn't pinned or anything. Unless they thought he needed a backboard? Too late for that now.

Focus. He tried to focus on what the boy was saying.

Suddenly he felt like he couldn't breathe. He coughed some more and reached for his canteen. Wait. His pack wasn't next to him. "Water?" he gasped, and the boy managed to find his canteen and give it to him. It had been hot work, and he'd given Kudadad a drink from it; the boy had remembered. Smart boy. If only Daniel could remember his name.

"How long was I . . . sleeping?" Daniel didn't know the word for "unconscious" and wasn't sure "out" would do it.

The boy repeated the word dubiously, and Daniel tried again. "Sleeping. Out. Not opening my eyes." He sighed, but that made him cough again. "How long since the wall fell?"

Then the boy helpfully responded with a sentence that included a word he didn't know at all. Apparently Daniel had been out of it, if not entirely unconscious, for about twenty of whatever that measure was. Minutes? Where was his team?

"Jack and Sam and Teal'c?"

The boy told him very slowly that they had taken Zal for help, and then Daniel remembered that he'd heard that already. "Did they look for me first?" he asked. The answer was a clear negative. How could they do that? Was there something he was forgetting? Daniel was bewildered, and something else—hurt. That was silly. They'd never left him behind without a good reason. He pushed the hurt away. Zal must be far more in need of help than he was. But couldn't they have checked on him first?

A voice called from somewhere, Daniel couldn't tell where, and the boy answered too rapidly for him to follow, raising his voice to call back. It made Daniel's head hurt more. He closed his eyes again. Wait. Jack and the others didn't speak the language. Did they think he was dead? That was pretty much the only thing that would make them leave. Did they think he was too badly buried? Maybe they had gone to get help. But why take Zal?

"How—" Daniel couldn't think how to ask how badly Zal was hurt, so he settled for "How was Zal hurt?"

"Bad," the boy answered. Further details required a few repetitions, but Daniel finally got that the boy wasn't waking up. Daniel _had_ woken up before, and even spoken, the teenager told him, though he didn't clearly remember it.

So they'd rushed Zal back to the SGC for medical treatment. It made sense, but it didn't take three of them to do it. Couldn't they have sent Sam back, and left Jack and Teal'c to help him? He was sure Sam could carry the boy. Although it was nearly a half-hour walk to the Gate.

Daniel remembered all the steps up, and he really didn't want to have to go back down right now. He wished they had a ramp, like some ziggurats did, instead of stairs. Then he thought that if they had a ramp, he might just roll down it. Of course, he might do that with stairs too, the way he was feeling. That was almost funny.

Daniel coughed again. It was still dusty in here. He'd better get out. Why were they in here anyway? Oh, right, Telchak's device. Gee, at least he could tell it wasn't turned on. If it were turned on, he was sure he'd be feeling better than this. He suspected it was being in the hut with the device turned on that made him much better able than Bill to run when they'd escaped from that shack in Central America. When he thought about it, they'd gone so long without food, and with only the water that dripped in when it rained at night, that they shouldn't have been able to run at all. It was no wonder Bill had quickly collapsed and been unable to go anywhere until he'd had help from their rescuers.

Daniel took another sip of water, a very small one, because his head had felt like this before, and he didn't want the water to come back up: he _did_ remember enough to avoid making that mistake again. Puking would make his head feel even worse. "Can you help me stand up?" he asked the boy.

The boy did so right away, and he kept a hand on Daniel's arm as they walked slowly. Soon they were back in the main room of the temple, which was, thank God, undamaged. Daniel suddenly realized he was thanking God for the lack of damage to a temple that might be a different god's. Or was Khoda, or Khuda as they called him here, the same as his own god? The god he was never certain he believed in, but whom he couldn't help invoking frequently? He started to laugh, but the little added motion made his head worse, and that made it not funny again. The boy halted and looked at him for a moment, but then they made their way across the rest of the room.

Finally they were at the exit. There was the other acolyte, the one who had taken Zal down to his team, apparently, and the younger boy he'd met that morning. The boy was Zal's cousin, he remembered dimly. He was maybe ten or eleven—with blond hair and light-colored eyes, hazel maybe. Both boys were filthy but seemed unhurt.

The acolyte who had been standing outside began apologizing for not being inside to help, saying something about having to watch the boy after they got him out, but Daniel waved off the apology. "No problem," he said in English, and he could not think for the life of him how to put it in their language. He let his hand fall to his side again.

Oh, God. The steps. He thought he'd take them slowly, but he found himself gaining momentum, and as jarring as it was, he didn't want to stop, because he was afraid he'd never start again. The acolyte who had stayed with him still held him by the less battered arm, and the other held onto the blond boy who followed. Now Daniel remembered what the priest had told him that morning when he first saw the boys and expressed surprise. It must be some kind of recessive gene thing. Maybe Sam could explain. Every few years, a boy would be born with dark blond hair and light eyes, and he'd be deaf. Girls were occasionally born with the same coloring, but it was very rare; some of them could hear, but some of them were deaf, too.

But here, deafness wasn't treated as a disability. "Differently abled," Daniel thought with an internal smile, since actually moving his face hurt. It was taken as a sign that these children should be taught to read and write. He was sure it must be _harder_ to teach deaf children to read or write, but it was wonderful that they did so. So even the deaf children had a place, where they wouldn't get hurt because they couldn't hear a shout during the heavier labor that most hearing people did, and they weren't considered useless but special, chosen by Khuda to honor him in a particular way.

He remembered a deaf girl he'd known when he was a child. She was considered a "difficult placement," even more difficult than he was, perhaps. But she'd been younger than he, and she was adopted when he was about the age of the young boy behind him. He had been so glad to hear that news.

He managed to distract himself enough not to freak out or puke on the way down, and for that he was very grateful. Kudadad was sitting at the bottom of the steps and called out encouragement for the last twenty feet or so. Finally Daniel sat down at the bottom with the priest, who smiled and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Where are my. . . ?" he started to ask. Then he remembered. "They took Zal?"

The priest nodded. "They seemed very. . . ." A word followed that Daniel didn't know, and he had to ask the man to rephrase it. Finally they hit upon something Daniel knew: confused. A good word for right now. "I could not make myself understood. But finally they said they would come back with digging tools; they showed me"—he mimed digging, and Daniel wasn't at all surprised it had come to that—"and I think they want to help Zal."

"Zal was hurt . . . bad?" Daniel asked.

"Very badly," Kudadad confirmed. "He would not wake up for a time. Then he seemed to know no one. There was blood here"—he indicated his own temple.

That explained why they were in a hurry, but why did they all go? He tried to lick his dry lips, but his mouth was so dry it didn't help. "Did they think I was trapped?" Daniel asked. "Did they go up to look for me?"

"No," Kudadad answered. "I thought they would go up, but they did not. But they will come back. I hope it is soon," he added, "Zal is Sharabanou's son, and she is worried." He gestured to a woman who was embracing the other blond boy. She had a darker complexion and the brown hair and doubtless the brown eyes that most people had. The man added, "Sharabanou thinks now she should have gone with them, but she was afraid, and she was certain they would come back. And she wanted to check that her sister's son was not badly hurt." Or was that sister-in-law's son? Daniel wasn't sure. "He did not want to come down until we had gotten you out."

"How long ago was that?" Daniel asked, and then cursed himself as he got an answer he couldn't understand. "Where was the sun then?" he asked on a sudden inspiration.

Kudadad pointed just a little lower than the sun was now; it was still on the rise. That was good: it was not only still morning, but, unless he'd lost a whole day, he didn't think the accident could have been more than an hour ago. Their days were nearly the same length as Earth's.

Sharabanou now approached Daniel herself. "When will they return my son?" she asked anxiously but slowly; despite her worry, she was obviously thinking clearly and going easy on the injured foreigner. "They kept asking about you; I thought they would come back quickly, and bring my son!"

"I do not know," Daniel answered. "Perhaps I should go see what has happened." He felt a knot in his stomach, but he stood up anyway, with the help of the two acolytes, who moved to assist him immediately. What if the boy couldn't be saved? Could that be why they hadn't come back? Maybe they were looking for someone who could break the bad news. Who else knew Persian? Well, Lily, of course, should be able to get it pretty quickly, but was she off-planet already? He couldn't remember.

"Maybe you should come with me," he suggested, remembering that Zal was deaf. They must have figured that out by now, but how on earth would they communicate with a boy who was deaf _and_ didn't speak English? If Lily were there and figured out he'd started learning to read and write, they might be able to communicate with him, but he had the nagging feeling she had gone somewhere. His memory just wasn't working quite right today.

Sharabanou took Daniel's arm from one of the acolytes and asked the teen to look after her nephew and the priest. She said a few words to her nephew—mouthing them more than saying them. He could see her lips move, but she hardly bothered to make a sound.

Then they made their way to the Stargate. Sharabanou didn't speak often, but Daniel got the sense that she blamed him for what had happened to her son and was holding back the accusations primarily to be certain he took her to her son. He didn't have the energy to start conversations, let alone to answer her implied accusations, so he had a lot of time to try—and fail—to remember just what had gone wrong. He knew enough about what had gone wrong, though. He'd turned down help, he'd let the boys get too close to the wall—if Zal died, or was permanently injured, it would be his fault. The priests had little practical training. They had good reasons for not knowing how to get through an already-damaged wall properly. What was his excuse?

Finally they reached the Stargate. Several people were waiting more than a safe distance from the Gate, as if they didn't realize there would be a warning before it activated and weren't sure how far it reached, and they confirmed that no one had come back. Janet would probably give him hell for walking all that way, but they hadn't met any SGC personnel coming towards them, so he didn't think he really had an alternative. If he was lucky, she'd just be so glad to see him alive and moving that she'd skip the lecture.

Damn. He had no GDO. Thank God they'd left the MALP there near the DHD. He could use that to communicate. He still couldn't get over the fact that none of them had even come up the steps to look for him. He knew he should put the injured boy ahead of himself, but surely it wasn't an either/or situation? What happened to "no one gets left behind"? But Jack had even come to Central America for him, with just one man for backup whom he called a friend but didn't seem to trust entirely. Why would Jack have left now? Or Teal'c, who always looked out for Daniel before he worried about anyone else, including himself? Or Sam, who was the one who really persuaded him to come back to Earth when he didn't even remember who he was, let alone who they were? He could not understand how any of them could leave him there.

As soon as Daniel touched the DHD, everyone backed even further away, except for Sharabanou, who stood behind Daniel, making herself as small as she could but not retreating any farther. She flinched at the whooshing sound and the sudden outwelling of light and color when the Gate opened. He smiled a reassurance and bent down stiffly to activate the MALP.

There was almost no delay before he was talking to a clearly startled General Hammond himself on the little video screen. "Doctor Jackson?" He sounded incredulous. Did they really think he was dead? Maybe that was why they hadn't returned yet!

"General, they tell me the rest of SG-1 went home with a child, Zal, who was injured."

"A child? But, Doctor Jackson, they told me. . . ." Even on the little screen, and even without his glasses, he could see the confusion on Hammond's face and a sudden realization. "They told me the boy was you. That Telchak's device had made you younger."

Daniel stared at the screen in silence, trying to process those words, which were refusing to make proper sense. Hammond didn't have sunstroke, did he? No, wait, he'd never been on the planet. Part of Daniel's mind was also wondering where his glasses were and why he hadn't noticed sooner that he'd lost them.

"Doctor Jackson? Doctor Jackson, were you injured in the cave-in?" How many times had Hammond asked him that?

"Uh, yes, sir. A little. And my radio broke."

"Well, I think you'd better come home! You're up and walking, right?" he asked anxiously.

"Sir, I don't have a GDO with me; Sam and Jack had them."

Hammond smiled. "Tell you what: I'll even open the iris for you."

"Thanks, sir. Oh, and I'm bringing Zal's mother."

The general hesitated.

"She's really worried, sir. And the boy is deaf, and he probably has no idea what's going on, even if you've gotten Lily to talk to him. Is Lily there?"

"Doctor Mansoor? She's on her honeymoon, Doctor Jackson." Hammond was still frowning. Oh. So that was what he'd forgotten. "We've reached her by phone, but as the boy hasn't spoken yet, we couldn't even give her a chance to _try_ to learn his language. I was going to tell her in the next hour whether we needed her to fly back here or not; we've been checking to see if any of the other linguists can cover, based on what the rest of your team said you said about the language, but it looks like the answer is no."

That was a little too much for Daniel's brain to handle right now. "Sir, I hit my head. I'm not at my best right now, but I'm pretty sure I haven't been compromised. And Sharabanou really needs to see her son."

Hammond nodded quickly. "Bring her through. We'll have to have guards accompany both of you, son, until we've verified that you are who you say you are and haven't been interfered with, and they'll probably stay with her. But come through."

They did, with Sharabanou clutching his arm. Daniel got a few steps down the ramp and then stumbled and might have fallen, but Sharabanou quickly shifted her grip, and he stayed upright. He thanked her.

Daniel could see the fear in her eyes as she looked at the armed men and then around the large room, but when General Hammond came close, she drew herself up and introduced herself. Daniel translated her brief words of greeting.

"George Hammond, ma'am," the General said, with a little bow of the head. "Doctor Jackson? Oh, I should have called a medical team for you." He turned to call up to the control room, but Daniel stopped him.

"Um, sir, I'd really rather walk. I've made it this far; I can make it to the infirmary."

"But. . . ."

"I don't want to leave Sharabanou, and I don't know how they'd fit a gurney, guards for both of us, and one or more medics in the elevator. Really, sir, I'm good for a little longer." He gave a smile that he hoped was convincing.

"Very well, Doctor Jackson. Right this way, Ma'am." He ushered Sharabanou in front of him, and four SFs met them outside the Gateroom.

"General?" Daniel said. "I don't think you need to come."

"Doctor Jackson," Hammond said with a quiet smile, "I really want to be there when SG-1 finds out that you are _not_ that little boy they've been fussing over for the last hour and some."

Daniel had to admit that was pretty good reasoning. Sharabanou didn't like the elevator, and he didn't appreciate the motion himself at that point, but their destination wasn't far now. He did say a few things to try to reassure her along the way, but her face remained grim.

They got out to the muffled sound of screams. Sharabanou let go of him and ran towards the noise; Daniel managed to get his arms in front of the SFs before they brought their weapons up. "It's her son! Let her go." He and General Hammond followed as fast as he could manage.

So they got around the corner in time to see Sharabanou and two guards rushing into the MRI room, and they squeezed inside the little room to find Sharabanou lifting her son off the MRI trolley. All of SG-1 were standing around the trolley, and now they looked at her in shock while Janet tried to shout over the panicked mother and child. They didn't even notice Daniel and Hammond at first.

"He's not a Goa'uld; do you really think he needs the MRI?" Daniel yelled over the whooshing of the machine and the general chaos. The volume of his own voice made his head hurt worse.

Only Teal'c heard him, but Teal'c pivoted to see him, and immediately thereafter he boomed, "O'Neill!" and grabbed Jack's arm to make him look. That stopped everyone but Sharabanou, whose accusing words trailed off while everyone else stared at Daniel.

"Rumors of my . . . second childhood have been greatly exaggerated?" he said. Oh, he wished he'd asked the General or the SFs to bring a camera. He hoped his memory was now working properly so that he wouldn't forget this. Teal'c's eyebrows were both up, Janet's mouth hung wide open, Sam's eyes were threatening to engulf her whole face, which was covered in some weird white paste—oh, yeah, sunburn. And Jack, who had clearly gotten a little too much sun himself, looked like he was trying to decide whether to hit Daniel or give him a big hug. He was pretty sure Jack wouldn't really hit him, but Daniel didn't think he could handle a hug right now. He was kind of sore all over. A wall falling on you would do that, but it was better than the time Jaffa had shot down part of a cave on top of him.

"How do we know it's really him?" Jack asked Hammond without taking his eyes off Daniel. Behind Jack, Sharabanou hugged her son.

"Well, he sounds like Doctor Jackson, he looks like Doctor Jackson, he brought the boy's mother, and—and we'll do tests, of course, but I'm pretty convinced."

He could see the whole team, and Janet, visibly relax. Well, except for Teal'c.

"Great to see you too, Jack," Daniel said, now that he seemed safe from a hug. "I did wonder why you guys all left instead of helping me out of the rubble, but now I kind of understand. Although my hair didn't get that dark until I was in grad school."

"Oh, Daniel," Sam exclaimed, and she came forward and would surely have given him a hug, but he held up a filthy, torn hand, and she stopped dead. "We never meant to leave you!"

"She's the kid's mother? So why did she keep calling him Daniel? Is that his name too?" Jack demanded, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"His name is Zal. Didn't she tell you?" Jack looked at the floor. Teal'c and Sam looked at Jack. "What?"

"Colonel O'Neill believed that 'Zal' meant 'hurt,'" Teal'c supplied, winning a sharp look from Jack.

"Hey, neither of you disagreed with me on that!"

"Daniel?" asked Janet, laying a hand softly on his arm. He wasn't exactly sure when she'd arrived at his side or how long she'd been trying to get his attention. "Are you hurt? Get a gurney," she snapped at one of the SFs in a very sudden shift of tone.

"Yeah, actually. A little banged up." The gurney was starting to sound attractive all of a sudden. Hammond made some kind of motion, and an SF actually left, apparently in search of a gurney.

Jack was muttering something about Daniel not being much older than Zal when he started grad school, for no reason Daniel could see.

"Head?" Janet took his chin and looked at his eyes. To his relief, she didn't pull out her penlight immediately.

"I think it's a concussion. I was unconscious for a bit, and then I was kind of out of it for a few minutes."

Janet nodded, releasing his head.

The disembodied voice of a technician said, "So the MRI is off, then?"

"Just wait!" Janet commanded. She turned and looked behind her. Sharabanou was whispering, but her mouth was moving very obviously; she was exaggerating the motions, apparently. "Is the boy—"

"Zal," Daniel said.

"Is Zal deaf?"

"Yes." Daniel frowned, but that hurt his head. If they thought Zal was him, how long had it taken them to realize the boy was deaf?

"But he asked for his mom!" Jack roared. "If he's not you, how can he do that?"

"God, Jack— _I'm_ not deaf. You're asking how a boy can ask for his mom?" Okay, he'd reached the end of his endurance. He needed that gurney now, especially if Jack was going to yell. "He didn't say, 'Mom,' did he?"

"It was more like 'mama,'" Sam told him.

"Oh. Pretty universal sound, actually." Suddenly hands were helping him up on the gurney. "Wait! Shouldn't I help translate for Sharabanou and Zal?"

" _After_ I check you out," Janet said. "Now that we know it's not traumatic hearing loss, and his mother apparently objects to the MRI, I think the scan can wait. His behavior makes lots of sense if you consider—"

But Daniel didn't care to consider anything anymore, and he let Janet's voice drift over him. He hadn't killed the boy, and he wasn't responsible anymore, and maybe now he could get some rest.


	5. Chapter 5

It was, of course, evening at the SGC, and Daniel was quite content to get checked out and spend the night in an infirmary bed. Lots of bruises, and a mild concussion, but nothing worse. He hadn't thrown up yet, and he even managed to keep down some broth and crackers that a nurse brought him, although that was pretty iffy for a while. Janet brought Sharabanou and Zal in and told Daniel that they'd need his help in the morning to explain the MRI to the two offworlders, because she still wanted to do a scan: they'd never gotten him to hold still long enough for one. But the boy looked fairly bright and alert, and he was clearly communicating with his mother. Daniel could tell he spoke in very simple sentences, and some of his sounds didn't seem quite right, but that wasn't bad for a roughly five-year-old boy who had been deaf from birth.

In the meantime, Janet thought they all needed some rest. She took the radical step of banning the rest of SG-1 from the infirmary until morning. Daniel felt unexpected gratitude. He had been very glad to see them all, and to find out that there was a good reason why they'd left him behind, but he really wasn't prepared to deal with the three of them right now, with guilty looks on their faces and anger that was probably partly directed at themselves and partly directed at him.

Daniel started to go to sleep right away, only to jerk awake because of odd noises. The curtain around his bed hadn't been pulled, and he realized that Sharabanou was taking the mattress off the bed and putting it on the floor, as quietly as she could. That made a lot of sense, actually. She was handling all this weird stuff pretty well, considering that he'd given her hardly any explanations since they got here.

He was in and out of sleep, mostly because every hour a nurse woke him and asked him stupid questions to make sure his brain was still working. He'd been asked his birthday so many times over the years that he suspected he could recite it with major brain damage, but he wasn't going to share that fact. And he had about the same chance of getting the day of the week right after a concussion as before, so they generally just asked him the year, which he did manage to get. This nurse wasn't very inventive; other nurses had asked him to curse in specific languages, or what kind of underwear his teammates wore, or other unexpected questions. (He was sure he'd won points for denying that he knew anything about Sam's underwear. He had probably won even more points for his imaginative descriptions of Jack's.)

The nurse wasn't pleased about the mattress on the floor occupied by both Zal and his mother, but Daniel convinced her not to object. He didn't feel like translating a pointless argument. He had enough work as it was, because every time the nurse woke him up to check on him, she insisted on having Sharabanou ask the boy questions, even though they weren't sleeping, aside from a nap. Instead, they were nestled among pillows on the mattress, now on the floor, looking at picture books Janet had dug up somewhere. The mother seemed more impressed than the son, even though they were fairly safe scenes, with no technology, as far as Daniel could tell with brief glimpses.

Sharabanou at first thought these very sophisticated people must know more than she did, and she went to the trouble of asking her son questions, but of course Daniel had to tell the nurse each time that Sharabanou said the boy was answering correctly. By the fifth or sixth time they'd been through this, Sharabanou had lost patience, and Daniel was losing his. He did maintain enough control that he merely translated as "My son is fine, thank you very much" what were really, if he understood correctly, comments about why the nurse couldn't attract a man to have sons of her own.

In the wee hours, however, Zal did fall asleep. Sharabanou refused to wake her son, and by seven a.m., she had begun to sleep herself; she actively threatened the night duty nurse when she was awakened. Daniel did not fully translate what she said and knew that Sharabanou suspected he was not giving the nurse anything like the full force of her invective, and he feared the threats would be directed at him next.

All too soon the lights went up, and he had no time to pull himself together before Jack was there. "Good morning!" Jack said brightly, with a grin.

Daniel refused to sit up yet. He really wasn't ready for company. The only good thing was that they'd probably stop waking everyone up every hour now, so if only his team would let him sleep. . . . And how was he supposed to translate for Zal and his mother if he couldn't think? Sleep. He'd think better after he got some more.

But there wasn't time for sleep, he realized. "Do you know what time it is on the planet?" he asked irritably. "They're expecting us back. They're probably worried about Zal _and_ Sharabanou by now, and they need help digging out the _herad_."

Jack shrugged with a maddening lack of concern and pulled a chair over next to the bed. "Carter would know the time. I can't remember." That was probably just as well; Daniel remembered it was now night on the planet. But Jack didn't stop there. "Had a few other things on my mind."

"Like strapping a terrified boy into an MRI machine?" Yeah, he was cranky, and yeah, that wasn't fair. But they'd left him behind, injured, on another world, and he was prepared to play that card if he had to. Except that would probably keep Jack _here_ rather than getting Jack to let him go back to sleep.

"We thought it was _you_ , Daniel, and we needed to know what was going on. Ya know, we _had_ figured out the kid was deaf. And he showed no sign of recognizing us—for reasons which now seem obvious, but didn't yesterday."

He wondered if just saying, "Go away, Jack, and come back in three or four hours" would work. No, Jack would probably decide he was acting weirder than usual and get Janet to run more tests. He'd gotten off fairly lightly the night before because everyone was just so glad to see him as an adult.

So instead he said, "You thought he was me, so you decided to strap him into a strange machine that makes tons of noise and vibrates a lot?"

Jack's reasonable answer didn't make him feel any better. "Yeah. We figured you'd forgive us eventually." He added with a knowing smile, "You always do."

Daniel tried to come up with a counterexample, but he had no luck. Jack continued to grin at him. What was he so damned happy about? When was Jack going to say, "we offered to help you, but you turned us down, and look what happened"? He knew it was coming eventually and wished they'd just get it over with.

Sam and Teal'c walked in while he was still struggling for a response. "Hi, guys," he said lamely.

They were both bright and cheerful too, despite the fact that Sam's face was peeling; she'd gotten a hell of a sunburn. It looked painful. Sam walked carefully past the mattress on the floor, where Sharabanou was awake again but still holding her sleeping son, and plunked herself down on Daniel's bed with a happy greeting. He winced a little at the motion of the mattress. He was covered with bruises, and his painkillers must be running out. He could probably take stronger stuff now since he'd gotten through the night interrogations okay, but he didn't want to get foggy from drugs. He had too much to do. Teal'c stood at the foot of the bed. Daniel reluctantly pushed the button to raise the head of the bed a little more and made an effort to focus on his friends. He even put on his glasses for them; Janet had set a spare pair on the table beside him the night before. She ordered his glasses by the dozen, not individually, as she'd reminded him last night.

"You can't imagine how relieved we were to see you, Daniel," Sam told him. "I was—I was afraid that was you, and that if the device was damaged, you'd be stuck that way!"

"How awful," Daniel murmured as he tried to think of something better to say.

Jack was _still_ smiling. "Could have been. I mean, once Carter started worrying _out loud_ about it"—that was aimed directly at the offender herself—"we all started worrying. We have enough trouble with you fully-grown; what the hell would we do with a five-year-old genius?"

"There's always the orphanage." He regretted it even as he was still saying it. They meant well, even if Jack always had to insult him in passing.

The smile vanished, and worse, he could see hurt in Jack's eyes. He wasn't sure how to take back what he'd just said, though. He wasn't even sure he wanted to. He just wanted some more sleep right now.

"DanielJackson, we would never send you to an _orphanage_ ," Teal'c said with distaste. "Indeed, we were discussing who would raise you in the event—"

"You _what_?" He looked at them accusingly. Jack didn't meet his eyes, but Sam—giggled? This was funny? "You're kidding."

"No, Daniel," Sam said, trying to control the laughter, her face turning even pinker in the places that weren't completely red, around her eyes and where her hat had covered her forehead. "It seems funny now, of course, but we did start to—"

"Great. My teammates want to adopt me." And Sam thinks that's really funny.

Jack looked up at him sharply. "You don't like that idea?"

"Of course not! Isn't that just . . . too weird?"

"You think none of us could handle you?" Did Jack feel he'd just insulted his parenting skills?

"You just _said_ that you could barely handle me as an adult," Daniel pointed out. He was glad his recall of the conversation seemed to be back to normal—although he wasn't entirely sure he'd know if it weren't. He certainly remembered enough to regret the turn their talk was taking. "I'm sure you were a fine father, Jack, but you're not _my_ father," he added with a sigh, to remove some of the sting. 

"Well, as you weren't raised by your father for most of your life anyway, that hardly seems relevant!"

Daniel stared. Was Jack angry because he'd referred obliquely to Charlie? But he'd told Jack that he was a good father! Was _that_ why he was angry? "I was raised by my father and mother until I was eight," he said coldly, steering clear of Jack's past.

"And then in one foster home after another," Jack replied—as if he didn't know! "No stability, no—"

"I seem to have turned out okay!" Daniel snapped. He was still tired, and now he was hungry and wanted coffee, but he supposed he wouldn't be allowed that yet.

"Some might disagree!" Jack shot back. How dare he? And what if Daniel asked how _his_ son had turned out? He knew he shouldn't do that, but. . . .

Over Sam's shoulder, Daniel saw Janet enter the room.

Sam didn't see her and began an earnest attempt to head off his response to Jack. "Daniel," she said, placing a hand gently on his knee, "we were worried about you! You might really have been. . . . And, I mean, we all know you didn't have the best childhood."

"And you did?" Maybe he shouldn't have said that. He'd probably regret that later.

Sam paused for just a moment, but it didn't stop her. She narrowed her eyes and continued, "We thought we could—I mean, if you were stuck like that, and we were really, _really_ hoping you weren't—the Colonel was even prepared to ask the Tok'ra for help—"

"Don't remind me," said Colonel muttered.

"But if you _were_ stuck like that, we thought maybe we could . . . make it better the second time around. Give you some of the stability and the, well, the _love_ you didn't get—" Sam went on.

"I got more love in my first eight years than a lot of kids get in their lifetime," he said pointedly.

Sam broke eye contact at the same time as Janet stepped closer and raised her hands. Janet's mouth was open to speak, but she didn't have a chance.

"She didn't mean your first eight years, _obviously._ " Jack dived right in to help. "Give her some credit! But it's clear to _everybody_ who knows you for more than a few minutes that somewhere along the line you didn't . . . get enough . . . something."

Daniel closed his eyes. That was totally uncalled for. "Did all of _you_ get hit on the head yesterday? I didn't get enough love, or something? What do you want me to do? Hey, I tried getting married, but being related to me seems always to be terminal." He opened his eyes again to catch both Teal'c and Jack wincing at the reminders of their own perceived failures, and he felt a little guilty satisfaction at that.

"I think that's enough," said Janet in a dangerously controlled voice that suggested she was about to erupt herself. "More than enough, in fact."

"Yes, it _is_ ," Jack said, to his surprise.

"What? You can all sit there and tell me how damaged I was by my horrible childhood—" He knew he should stop. It was too late to quit while he was ahead, but he shouldn't keep digging.

"Which seems not to have ended yet," Jack put in hypocritically.

"—and I'm supposed to _thank_ you for trying to _fix_ me?" He would stop now, he really would.

"It wasn't fixing you!" Sam protested. "We just thought maybe we could . . . maybe we could give you some things you didn't get. I mean, it's amazing that you've turned out as well as. . . ."

Okay, he wasn't going to stop. He _had_ to answer that; he didn't know quite how, but he was sure something would emerge. But while his mouth was hanging open with nothing yet coming out, Janet shouted, "Out! Only patients! Everyone else _out_ of my infirmary!" Her voice made his head ring, even more than Jack's yelling had done.

Daniel suddenly remembered Sharabanou and looked down to see her holding Zal protectively. Of course she had no idea what this argument was about. There was fear on her face for a moment, but then she saw his gaze and glared at him. Zal had awakened, probably when his mother clutched him hard, but his mother was holding his face to her body so he couldn't see anything.

Jack and Sam were already leaving the room in the time it took him to refocus from their offworld visitors to his friends. Teal'c nodded and left in silence. But he could hear Jack's raised voice coming back to him from the hallway, "And he said rumors of his second childhood had been exaggerated!"

Daniel's face felt hot. He had sat up at some point during the argument, and he leaned his back against the pillows now. "I'm sorry," he told Janet, who came to the side of his bed _not_ occupied by a mattress on the floor. She looked angry.

"Just a moment," he begged. He turned to Sharabanou and reassured her that the argument had nothing to do with her, and he was sorry to have scared her. She denied having been scared, and he said, "Then I am sorry to have scared Zal." They both knew Zal was at worst scared by his mother's sudden protectiveness, and probably not even that, but Sharabanou was willing to accept that. She released the boy and began to talk to him in that slow, quiet, exaggerated way that she had for her son that was mostly just lip motions.

He was regretting what he'd said sooner than he thought. "Sorry, Janet," he said quietly. "I don't know—my head hurts, and I'm tired, and I said some really stupid things."

Janet gave him a little smile. "Yeah, but I don't think you were the big winner in that category today."

He snorted, but his head made him wish he hadn't. "Jack had some good ones, didn't he?"

She nodded and pulled out the dreaded penlight but didn't shine it yet. "I'm sure if he's not sorry yet, he will be soon."

"You mean before or after Teal'c has a word. . . ." He laughed and coughed a little. "Sorry. I need to stop."

"Yep. Somebody has to be the grown-up around here."

"I thought that was you," Daniel said.

Janet hesitated, toying with the pen a little. "They didn't tell you I was the leading candidate to adopt you."

"Oh," Daniel said. All the fight had gone out of him. He wasn't even certain now why he had been so offended.

"Contingency planning! It's a military habit. We were standing around while Zal went into the MRI repeatedly, trying to get him calm enough to hold still. We had some time to talk while he was in the machine. Too much time, apparently," she said with genuine regret. "We always have a worst-case scenario, and ours was, what if we can't get Daniel back to the right age, and he stays deaf?"

"You were willing to adopt me even if I was deaf?" He'd forgotten that they'd already figured out Zal was deaf.

"Of course, Daniel! And it's not about you being 'damaged'—well, no more than most of us are." She finally shined the light in his eyes when he'd stopped expecting it. He winced, but she said, "Good. Pupils are normal today."

"Glad something is," he said, again by way of apology.

"Oh, no, I think that little . . . conversation shows that things are pretty normal, actually."

"I must have scared the hell out of them," Daniel said, hoping it wasn't obvious that he very much wanted confirmation of that.

"Yes, you did," Janet said. "Quiet. I need to hear those lungs." She slipped the cold stethoscope down the front of his scrub top, and he gasped slightly.

After a bit of listening, she said, "You're still kind of congested. God knows what you inhaled."

"Torch smoke and lots and lots of dust."

"Well, I'm putting you on broad-spectrum antibiotics just in case. You had open cuts and serious lung irritation, and you couldn't get cleaned up for over an hour after the accident, so you're ripe for several kinds of infection."

Daniel seized the opportunity to ask for a shower. "Not to mention just plain ripe. Can I—"

She cut him off before he even completed the thought. "Later." She started checking abrasions that had been bandaged the night before. "And something for the headache?"

"When I woke up," Daniel confessed, "—in the temple, I mean—I couldn't believe they'd left me."

"They were sure they hadn't," Janet told him as she continued her examination.

"Yeah, but I didn't know that until General Hammond told me when I contacted him through the MALP." He paused. "Didn't they think others might have been in there?"

Janet shook her head. "I don't think they even considered it until they were back here, and then they were trying to calm Zal down so I could do my job. I _know_ that Colonel O'Neill felt guilty for not checking right away, and for leaving dangerous technology there—but they thought the boy with the head injury was _you_ , and he was unresponsive until about the time they got back here. They had a lot of trouble communicating, of course, and the Colonel didn't know how many people had been at the temple. He thought it was just supposed to be you and a priest, he said."

Daniel could feel his face flushing again. He hoped Janet wouldn't notice, but of course she did.

"And you just gave them hell for not caring enough," she chuckled. "I think you had that backwards."

"Not for not caring enough!" Daniel protested. "For not . . . for not respecting me." She frowned and waited for him to continue. "I mean, do they think of me on a daily basis as emotionally damaged? Never raised properly?"

Janet stopped her examination. She was choosing her words carefully, he could tell from the slowness of her questions. "Do you think of Colonel O'Neill as . . . a well-adjusted individual?"

"Uh. . . ."

"Do you think Teal'c is? Sam?"

"Well, considering what Teal'c has been through, yeah. And Sam, definitely. Yeah, I do."

"Really? Sam?" Janet seemed genuinely surprised. "Despite. . . . No, never mind."

"No, you can't stop now," he begged. "Despite what? Losing her mother? A father who is Tok'ra? Yeah, I do." When Janet hesitated, he remembered something from years before. "You mean her ex-fiance? Um . . . we all make mistakes?"

Janet smiled.

" _You_ don't think of Sam as unstable?" Daniel had to ask. He'd been infatuated with a woman called "Destroyer of Worlds," so what did that make him?

"Not unstable, no, of course not!" Janet replied. "But, well, ask anyone! Everyone on base knows SG-1 has 'issues'." She made quotation marks in the air with her fingers.

"Well, yeah," Daniel laughed. "But remember Makepeace? He seemed pretty normal for a Marine, and then it turned out he was working for the NID and stealing from our allies! And Lieutenant Patterson? Transferred for beating up one of his teammates! It was only the rest of the team that kept him from killing the other guy, and that was with no alien technology involved! At least when we try to kill each other, there are aliens or weird technologies involved. And Pulaski tried to go native on her first trip to—"

"I get it, Daniel," Janet cut him off; they both knew the list would be quite long. "But do _you_ get it?"

"No," he had to confess after a moment. "I don't."

"You had a lousy childhood, from the time you were eight. The Colonel . . . the Colonel lost his son, and his wife left him. Teal'c had already spent more than a normal human lifespan serving a false god before you even met him, and he has done many, many things he regrets greatly, as you know best of all!"

Daniel lowered his head a little at that one, remembering how he'd reminded his friends of their failure to save Sha're.

"Sam probably _is_ the best adjusted of you, but she lost her mother and was . . . distant from her father for years! If you could somehow go back and spare them that, wouldn't you?"

"Of course!" Daniel answered. "But they can't undo the deaths of my parents!"

"No, but they saw a chance to undo some of what . . . what you've been through, and they were trying to make the best of a bad situation. We," she corrected herself. "We were trying to make the best of a bad situation, to tell ourselves that even if we didn't get you back as yourself, the way you are now, we'd still have you, and maybe we could . . . spare you some of what you went through. You'd do the same for any of us."

He flushed again.

"Don't be _too_ embarrassed," Janet added. "Your . . . _relatively_ well-adjusted team seems to have picked the worst possible way of telling you. And you responded in kind."

"Are you saying we deserve each other?" Daniel asked with a smile that made his bruised jaw ache.

She grinned back. "That's not a _professional_ opinion, of course. Now, if you'll assist me, maybe I can examine my other patient?"

They turned to Sharabanou and Zal, glad to find the boy alert and curious again.

*****

Jack was glad to get out of the briefing room. He thought that holding a meeting about when they'd return to the planet and what they'd do when they got there without Daniel was pretty pointless anyway, and he went so far as to suspect Janet of having asked Hammond to call it just to get them out of her hair. And Daniel's.

The upshot was that Hammond didn't want to send them back without a translator. It made more sense to wait a couple of days for Daniel, who had picked up the language and knew the people most involved, to accompany them than it did to recall Mansour from her honeymoon, make her learn the language from Daniel and maybe the kid's mother, and then ship out about the time that Daniel would be ready (if they were lucky).

Word of the device might have gotten out now, and they might need all the trust they could get from those people if they were to remove it safely. Assuming it hadn't been damaged or destroyed in the collapse. Daniel did very well at winning trust—no slight on Mansour, O'Neill just hadn't worked with her, and he didn't really have any associations with that name apart from what Hammond had said about her.

"You think it's safe to go back to the infirmary?" he asked Carter and Teal'c as they waited for the elevator. They simply looked at him. "Okay, how's this for a plan: I'm going in. If I haven't made contact after an hour, send in S&R." Carter got that slightly constipated look she got when she wasn't yet prepared to argue with him but was getting close.

He knew they were unhappy with him; they'd made it quite clear enough. To be honest, he wasn't sure why he'd gotten so upset himself. Somehow Daniel just seemed to push all his buttons. But they didn't blame Daniel; they blamed him. And they were probably right.

The elevator arrived. "I think it's best if we don't outnumber him again," Jack added as he got in and pressed the button for the infirmary.

"If you think so, sir." Carter hit the floor for her lab. She looked at the Jaffa and, after a dramatic pause, added, "But if the Colonel's not out in an hour, Teal'c, I say we cut our losses and run for it."

She was out of the elevator before he had an appropriate response, and Teal'c got off with her. What was Teal'c doing on that floor? They were probably just going to make fun of him some more. Jack continued on to the infirmary.

The bed was empty, and an empty mattress lay next to it on the floor. More tests? Well, he'd probably be better off talking to Daniel when Janet was _not_ around, so he started to leave. He had been trying to figure out what to say, exactly, but as he wasn't sure exactly where he'd gone wrong, he hadn't come up with anything yet.

Jack went back to the elevator but hadn't even pressed the call button before he heard a familiar voice insisting he could walk just fine.

"In fact, I walked a good two miles to the Gate yesterday _after_ I got hurt, and then I made it here from the Gate room!" The voice was approaching, and Jack moved to meet them.

"Actually, it was just over a mile from the ziggurat," Jack told the nurse before making eye contact with Daniel, "and you should have seen how happy he was when Janet called for a gurney for him yesterday."

Daniel glared. Okay, so this was not a great start to the conversation, Jack realized.

"I'll take him from here. Back to his usual bed?" he asked, moving behind the chair as the nurse stepped happily aside.

"Yes, sir. And see if you can get him to eat a little more. Dr. Frasier said a bagel would be good! No cream cheese!" she was calling after them as Jack took over and turned the corner.

"And what, I ask you, is the point of a bagel _without_ cream cheese?" Daniel asked.

Okay, so maybe not a bad start. Daniel didn't make a jibe at Jack, didn't even insist that he could walk, just complained about food. Maybe Daniel was feeling a little apologetic himself. That remark about Sha're had hit home with both Jack and Teal'c, and Jack knew that Daniel knew it.

Jack decided that his bagel question was best taken as a rhetorical one and continued on to Daniel's bed. "Curbside service!" he announced. "How do you like that?"

"Thanks," Daniel said, immediately locking the wheels and standing before Jack could offer any help. He got on the bed a little slowly, but he looked way better than the day before. He was bruised from here to next week, and he had several small bandages on his arms and the back of one hand, but Frasier had ruled out any serious injury—well, except for the concussion.

The chair Jack had sat in earlier had been moved, doubtless to fit the wheelchair in next to the bed, so Jack sat in the wheelchair.

"So," he started. "I thought I'd start by promising never to adopt you. Anything happens . . . you're on your own, kid."

That brought the desired snicker. "Jack, I've given you power of attorney," Daniel replied. "If I cease to be . . . of sound mind, you're already stuck with me."

"Oh." He hadn't thought of that in some time. He thought of taking the "of sound mind" bit and running with it, but he decided that wouldn't be a very good move right now.

"You want me to promise not to adopt you?" Daniel asked, smirking.

Okay, he'd just gotten here, and he was already behind. Had Daniel worked out everything in his head while he was meeting with Hammond? "Well, since you have _my_ power of attorney, I think you're stuck with _me_."

"But _I_ didn't say _you_ were emotionally damaged," Daniel needled. Okay, maybe he wasn't feeling apologetic!

"Technically, I didn't say _you_ were, either."

"No, you said I was missing . . . _something_." Daniel's face was unreadable; Jack wasn't sure how upset he still was.

Jack was prepared to be magnanimous, especially if that would help them both forget that he'd been alternately baiting and yelling at his concussed friend in front of strangers. Teal'c and Carter had given him hell. The whole thing was as much _their_ fault as his—more, because Carter had persuaded them all the boy _was_ Daniel, and Teal'c told Daniel about the whole adoption thing—but the other two had never raised their voices, so they came off looking good. "Look, I _never_ thought I could replace your parents. I just thought maybe, while we were _waiting_ for . . . I'd take you out to a couple of ball games—"

"Indoctrinate me while I was helpless to fight back?" He was smirking again.

What? Wasn't this the part where Daniel was supposed to apologize for getting all upset? And then Jack could say that it was all right, and he could even apologize for some of his smart remarks if necessary, and then they would discuss rubber bagels, why the commissary couldn't produce a decent one, and why bagels were safe but they wouldn't let Daniel have cream cheese yet.

To Jack's surprise, Daniel added after a long pause, "I should say . . . that I _do_ appreciate it. You guys making plans in case. . . . I mean, I didn't at the time, but I know. . . . I know Teal'c only told me about it to—to tell me that you'd take care of me. No matter what."

Jack unlocked the wheels. He never could sit still very long. He nodded and tried to choose his next words, but of course Daniel wasn't done.

"And if it helps, I'd do the same for you." A sudden grin. "But I think I'd find a better way of telling you."

Jack rolled the chair back and forth. It squeaked a little. That was annoying. He hadn't noticed it particularly when he was pushing Daniel. "I bet you would."

"Oh, no question!"

"So you'd adopt me? You know, I'm gonna remind you of this when you guys try to put me in some nursing home." Was the space too narrow for a wheelie? Probably. And Janet would _kill_ him if he injured himself in her infirmary.

"And I really, really wasn't in any way insulting your parenting skills."

Jack paused in his contemplation of the wheelchair. "Didn't think you were." He wasn't really mad at Daniel about that. He had been mad at the whole situation, and the memories it brought back, of his own failures, just hurt. Hurt deep.

"Oh? But you seemed. . . ."

"Hey, you can't say anything about my parenting that I haven't already said myself." He moved the chair slowly back and forth, getting a feel for it. Daniel had told him before, more than once, that he shouldn't blame himself for Charlie's death; he was sure Daniel wasn't even thinking of Charlie's death when he said Jack had _been_ a "fine father." Past tense.

"I think I can," Daniel said quietly. Then he fell silent. Jack had to look up at him to get him to speak again. Daniel was watching him closely. "I can say _good_ things about you as a parent. I don't think you say those very often yourself."

"What the hell do you know about me as a parent?" Jack asked him, but he couldn't work up any actual anger.

"Well, I've seen you . . . not as a parent, exactly, but sort of . . . an uncle."

That startled Jack; he'd been thinking of the same role himself yesterday. "Cassie?" He'd stopped moving the wheelchair. He started again. Maybe Daniel was thinking of the crystalline entity Charlie, but he wasn't a real boy, and Daniel hadn't seen very much of him; or Reetou Charlie, who _was_ a real boy who put unaccountable faith in Jack.

"Well, Cassie, sure. But first, with Skaara. He looked up to you, admired you . . . you could reach him in a way his own . . . our father couldn't." Daniel was fixing him with an intense look that made Jack uncomfortable. "You're good with kids," Daniel shrugged, apparently sensing Jack's discomfort.

 

Jack didn't know what to say, so he said nothing and tried just to concentrate on how the wheelchair felt. He'd had conversations like this many, many times before. They never went anywhere new.

And Daniel _still_ wasn't done. "Maybe it comes from . . . being close to them still." Was that some kind of swipe at him? He looked closely at Daniel again, but Daniel's face betrayed nothing. He still looked serious.

"Would you adopt Sam?" Daniel continued. Now Jack could hear from his voice that a smile was almost breaking through.

"This is a trick question, right?" He backed the chair up and then rolled forward and tried to pop a wheelie, but he got the front wheels about two inches off the ground, and it made more noise. Damn. He used to be able to do that. Maybe it was the chair.

"Janet will come after you if you break that wheelchair," Daniel announced cheerfully. "Are you going to answer the question?"

"No!" Frasier couldn't complain; the chair was already damaged. "I don't know what exactly you intend to _do_ with my answer, but the word 'blackmail' comes to mind!"

"So that's a 'no,' you wouldn't adopt Sam." Daniel looked around, probably for something to write with.

"That's a 'no, I won't answer the question!'" Jack threw his weight back harder and faster and succeeded in popping a wheelie—and catching his head on the wall. His head rang enough that the squeaking didn't bother him for a moment.

Daniel laughed out loud. "You know, what really made me mad was the implication that I hadn't grown up right, or I hadn't really grown up at all. And if I really _were_ childish, I'd have told you, 'Takes one to know one.'" When Jack could raise his head enough to straight at him, he added innocently, "But I'm not, so I didn't."

"Right." Damn. Completely outgunned by a guy who'd had a temple fall on his head less than twenty-four hours earlier. 'course, Jack probably just concussed himself on the wall there, and Daniel was liable to rat him out to Janet.

"So when are we going back to the planet?" Daniel asked, all seriousness again.

Right on schedule. "When Janet says you can go." Jack moved the wheelchair back and forth slowly. If that boy _had_ been Daniel, Janet could have handled him, Jack was pretty sure. He couldn't. He'd left most of that kind of stuff up to Sara.

"Lily isn't going to take my place?"

"Well, that would be a lousy honeymoon for her, wouldn't it?" He had the chair lined up now between the bed and the wall, parallel to both, and yes, there was space for a wheelie, as long as he didn't turn at all. "You already know the language, the people, the—"

"So when do we go?"

Jack snorted and started moving back and forth, making sure he could stay straight, getting ready to throw his weight to the back again.

Suddenly Daniel's voice dropped to a harsh, urgent whisper. "Jack!"

Instinct took over. He jumped out of the wheelchair before he even had time to think about it. Even as he gained his feet, he could see—and hear—a gurney entering the room. Why hadn't he heard them coming? Damned squeaky wheelchair.

Janet was beside the gurney, not behind, and so the chair was still moving a little when she got into the room. She glared at Jack, who bounced on the balls of his feet a little. "So, when you gonna spring Daniel?" Daniel had saved him from her; it was the least he could do.

"I thought you were getting him to eat a bagel, _Colonel_ ," Janet said coldly as they halted the gurney. How did she do that, make his rank sound like an insult even though he outranked her? And had she taught Carter, or the other way around? They didn't do it often, but they both did it very well.

"I didn't think you'd be done with the scans already," Jack admitted. "We just got back here ourselves."

"That's because I didn't leave until Zal was finishing up with the scans," Daniel told him with another innocent look. He could have warned Jack they'd be coming soon! "So what's the verdict?" he asked Janet.

Janet took a deep breath. "Ready to translate?" Daniel nodded. And they were off.

Jack was always amazed that Daniel could often translate _while_ he was listening to the other person, so his words overlapped with Janet's, and Sharabanou's, and it was confusing enough that Jack could barely take in what was said in _English_. The gist was that the head injury wasn't serious, and Zal was already recovering. That was a relief. He knew Janet had been deeply worried at first.

But there was more. Apparently Janet had been checking out Zeal's hearing as well, and she was talking about getting a specialist in. "A cochlear implant may enable him to hear," she told Daniel.

Daniel stopped dead. Sharabanou said something that must have been a question. Daniel's eyes narrowed a little, and Jack could tell he was still not at 100%. Daniel said something hesitantly. Then he stuck a finger in his ear.

"So this is how you say 'cochlear implant' in Persian?" Jack grinned at the doc, who scowled and waved a hand to cut him off.

Neither of them expected the look of fury that crossed Sharabanou face when Daniel had made his point more clearly. She spoke quickly and angrily, and Daniel waved his hands apologetically and repeated a phrase that Jack thought must mean "slow down." The angry woman then left space between each heavily emphasized word. She took time to glare at Janet while Daniel turned over her words in his head.

"Let me guess: that's a no?" Jack asked, shoving his hands in his pockets, before Daniel could give them the long version.

"Yeah, that's about it," Daniel said with a small sigh.

"She could fix his hearing, and she's refusing?" If that _had_ been Daniel, he'd sure as hell want him to get his hearing back.

"We don't _know_ that it could fix his hearing," Janet said. "I'd need an otolaryngologist to evaluate him. We'd also need. . . ."

Daniel was already translating again, but Sharabanou abrupt answer stopped them all.

Daniel shook his head slowly. "She doesn't want another doctor. She says his ears weren't hurt, only his head, and she didn't ask you to look at his ears. And she wants to go home—"

"But he could _hear_ , Daniel! Okay, maybe," he said to cut off Janet, who was about to start adding "ifs" and "maybes" again.

Sharabanou said something more.

"She says no," Daniel said a little later, though Jack didn't think it took that many words to say "no."

With impeccable timing, Carter and Teal'c entered the room. "Hey, guys," Jack said. "Teal'c: if Ry'ac couldn't hear, wouldn't you want him to be tested for something that might give his hearing back?"

Daniel sighed loudly. "Here we go again," he said, and then he busied himself talking to Sharabanou in her language.

Teal'c remained silent, just lifting an eyebrow.

"Frasier thinks a cochlear implant might give the kid hearing, and the mom won't even let a specialist look at him," Jack summarized.

"Janet?" Carter asked. As if he would lie to her.

Frasier nodded. "She says she was only worried about his head, not his ears."

"So Daniel's trying to talk her into it," Jack added.

"What? Jack, it's her decision."

Jack started. How the hell could Daniel pay attention to two different conversations, answer in the right language, and all with a concussion that he knew was still bothering him? "Well, you _are_ trying to convince her, right?"

 

Daniel said something more to the mother that Jack strongly suspected meant roughly "pardon me while I deal with this bozo" before answering, "No, I'm just making sure that there's no misunderstanding here. I haven't exactly _mastered_ the language yet, and my head. . . ."

"Should probably be getting some rest," Janet put in.

Daniel stopped talking but his mouth stayed open for a moment. He shut it, then said, "I thought you wanted me to translate!"

"I thought it would be relatively simple," Janet said sincerely to him before glancing around at the others. "I didn't know it was going to turn into a three-ring circus."

"Hey, it's not a circus, we don't have any—" Jack cut himself off too late. God, he had to think more before he spoke. He'd set himself up for that one.

"Clowns?" Daniel's smile was annoyingly superior. "No, I think we're all set on that count."

"I was _going_ to say 'tents,'" Jack replied.

"Don't make me evict you from the infirmary twice in the same day," Janet told him.

"I'm being good!" He held up his hands to signal surrender.

Janet pointed to the wheelchair behind him, which had come to rest. Teal'c lifted an eyebrow again. Carter crossed her arms. He was outnumbered.

Daniel was already talking to Sharabanou again, but he took another break. "Look, nobody needs to get kicked out," he said with a smile at Janet. "But I'm . . . I need to concentrate, and my head kind of hurts, so maybe the rest of you could come back later?"

Jack could see Carter and Teal'c melting, and he knew he'd lost. If he tried to stay . . . well, it wouldn't be worth the cost.


	6. Chapter 6

Daniel finally had a few minutes to himself. Zal was sleeping, Sharabanou was dozing and had temporarily abandoned her insistence on leaving immediately, Janet was off looking at Zal's medical records and "options" some more, and Daniel could contemplate his lunch. His lovely lunch of soup, a small sandwich, and Jell-O. Janet told him she was still concerned about his concussion and dizziness. So he'd missed the wheelchair when he got out of the MRI machine. It happened to everyone.

He supposed the food could be worse, of course. Sharabanou didn't seem to agree; she'd awakened at the arrival of food, given everything a taste, and promptly sent it all back except some crackers. Little did she know how much she should appreciate what she'd gotten. It could taste _bad_ , instead of having almost _no_ taste. He finished the soup, had a few bites of the sandwich, and tried to decide whether he wanted the rest of it. . . .

Daniel didn't realize he'd drifted off until a large figure loomed at the foot of his bed. He started.

"DanielJackson. I did not mean to awaken you," Teal'c told him.

"No, no, that's all right. I didn't mean to sleep," Daniel replied, fumbling to straighten his glasses.

Teal'c nodded and gave a hint of a smile. Daniel wasn't exactly sure what that meant.

"I, um, I've been meaning to apologize," Daniel said. He'd straightened things out with Jack, but Teal'c and Sam had been in the infirmary too briefly, and with too much else going on.

"As have I."

They looked at each other for a moment, each waiting for the other to start. So much for hoping Teal'c's apology would let him off the hook. Well, Teal'c did like to get the last word sometimes.

"I . . . I'm sorry about . . . this morning. I'd just woken up, and . . . I shouldn't have been upset that you guys wanted to help me." There. That wasn't so bad.

Teal'c nodded. "I did not mean to upset you, DanielJackson. I did not realize that my assurances . . . would become fodder for disputes about your childhood."

Daniel laughed a little. "No, you really couldn't be expected to see that coming." Now that that was out of the way, maybe he should have his Jell-O. Normally, he didn't care for it. In fact, he only ate it when he was sick or injured, which made him like it even less. But he didn't want those last two bites of sandwich, and he was actually _hungry_. When he had last eaten? Some juice and a bagel for breakfast, granted, but that wasn't much, and before that? He started to pick up his spoon.

But Teal'c wasn't finished. "I also deeply regret that our misunderstanding caused you distress."

Daniel set down the spoon on the tray table again. "Didn't we just cover this?" He frowned at Teal'c.

Teal'c frowned back. "We did not."

"You didn't know Jack would use what you said against me. . . ."

"That we did cover. I meant our misidentification of Zal as you." Sharabanou awoke at her son's name, but she said nothing. The boy was stirring.

"Oh." Daniel didn't know what to say; he wanted to excuse the mistake, but he still wasn't exactly sure how it had happened. He was about to ask if it was Jack's bright idea when Sam came into the room.

"Hi," she with some embarrassment.

Oh, no. Apologizing to Jack was awkward, but once it was done, it was done. An apology, a few jokes, and all was right again. Usually. There had been a few exceptions. Heck, sometimes there was never even a real apology, just an unspoken agreement. Teal'c was actually the easiest of the three: Daniel found it easier to apologize, and to explain himself, when he felt when he didn't have to worry much that he'd be misunderstood, or later quoted out of context—or mocked for getting so worked up about something so minor.

But Sam? She was so earnest, so very sorry when she was sorry, and yet she measured and weighed his words when he apologized as if she had to be sure of the precise quality and quantity, had to find hidden meanings, had to be certain he wasn't still mad, or hurt, or getting in some subtle dig. And to have her here before he and Teal'c had finished. . . .

"So. . . ." Sam started. Her eyes were on his Jell-O, not on him. Damn. Did that mean he should offer her his Jell-O?

Zal was waking up, and his mother seemed intent on offering him crackers.

"So. . . ." There was no way out of it. He'd knew he'd have to apologize to her, but he'd hoped for a little more time to pull his thoughts together.

"I was expressing my regrets to DanielJackson that our misidentification of Zal caused him to be left behind, forced to walk by himself to the Stargate, unaided."

He was? What the hell? That wasn't how Daniel remembered him putting it; surely his concussion wasn't _that_ bad. Even Janet didn't think so. Did she? Was that why he was eating this tasteless stuff? Teal'c must be helping him out here.

Daniel seized the opportunity to get in his apologies before Sam's, maybe distract her from the red Jell-O on his tray. "It's okay, Teal'c. I'm sorry, too; I'm sorry to you both. I'm sorry you had such a scare, and I'm really sorry I . . . blew up this morning. I just—I appreciate that you'd take care of me, no matter what."

Sam smiled at him. "So you're not upset anymore?"

"No, I'm not mad. It just seemed kind of . . . disturbing." Daniel realized that he'd talked just a little too long. Again.

"Disturbing?" Sam wrinkled her nose.

"You guys are my friends," Daniel rushed to say. "You . . . you _are_ my family. I . . . I guess I just . . . don't. . . ." It took a few moments to put his finger on what was wrong, but his teammates were willing to give him the time. "I don't like the idea of anyone _having_ to take care of me. In that way."

Sam looked relieved. "And you have no idea how glad we are. . . ."

He grinned as she trailed off. At least one of them could quit while she was ahead today. Her eyes went to his Jell-O again. Teal'c turned towards Sam, facing her expectantly. Distracting her from his Jell-O? Sharabanou opened another packet of crackers. They'd brought a bunch when she made it clear she didn't consider the rest of the food edible, and she hadn't even really needed Daniel to convey that.

"Oh!" she said suddenly, obviously remembering why she had come. "And I'm sorry too. I . . . I wasn't laughing at you. It was more at . . . us. I mean, we really did jump to a conclusion there! Well, I did. Teal'c shouldn't be apologizing for thinking Zal was you." She might have been flushing a little, but it was hard to tell with that weird, half-red, half-white, peeling skin on her face. She squeezed past the mattress to sit on his bed, near his feet. "I convinced Teal'c and the Colonel that he was you. And with all three of us convinced, it was easy to persuade Janet, and General Hammond. . . . I don't know why I was so sure, but—"

"We should have realized at once that Zal was not you." Unusually, Teal'c had cut Sam off.

Sam gave him a sharp look, and then her face changed. She was trying not to smile. No, wait. That wasn't dizziness: Sam was . . . jiggling just slightly. Kind of like the Jell-O. She was trying not to laugh. He had missed something here. "Okay, so how _should_ you have known he wasn't me?"

"Too quiet," Sam said simultaneously with Teal'c's more authoritative, "He hardly spoke."

Daniel picked up his spoon and stuck it in his Jell-O. "Just for that, you don't get any Jell-O." He took a bite and smiled at Sam. "Wise guys," he said around a mouthful of Jell-O.

"Why would I want your Jell-O?" she asked, wrinkling her nose again. "It's red."

Daniel looked at the stuff on his spoon. "So?"

"So? They have the blue stuff in at the cafeteria!"

Maybe Janet was right, Daniel reflected. Maybe he was getting too old to just bounce back from injuries. It had been more than half a day since the concussion, and things still weren't making sense.

"So why _did_ you think he was me?"

Sam looked at Teal'c and shrugged. Teal'c offered no assistance. Sam shrugged and pointed to Sharabanou. "Everyone had dark hair and dark eyes! You went into the temple with a priest, and the priest came out with a little blond, blue-eyed boy!"

Daniel chewed his Jell-O, waiting for more explanation. Actually, Jell-O took very little chewing. _That_ was what was wrong with his lunch. Not even the sandwich needed chewing. Maybe he could get some of Sharabanou's pile of crackers. Wait, he'd had crackers on the plate under his bowl of soup. He fumbled around the plate. Nothing.

Sharabanou nosily opened another package of crackers and smiled up at him. Or was that smirked? How long had he been asleep just now?

Sam asked, "Well, if it doesn't make you younger, why _did_ they call it the Fountain of Youth?"

Teal'c fielded that one, to both his teammates' great surprise: "How does Oil of Olay help you look younger too?"

That was pretty oracular, even for Teal'c. Sam looked at Daniel for an explanation. Daniel shrugged, then remembered that between bruises and sore neck muscles, he had meant not to do that.

Inspiration struck. "Oh!" Daniel said. "Does Oil of Olay make you look younger than you looked _before_ you used it, or just younger than you _are_?"

Teal'c nodded approvingly.

"We _are_ talking about the general 'you' and not, say, _me_ ," Sam confirmed.

"You use Oil of Olay?" Daniel asked, surprised. He supposed she was older than he was, wasn't she? And if he was starting to feel his age. . . .

"No!" she snapped.

Daniel stuck more Jell-O in his mouth quickly, before he could put his foot in it again.

"Perhaps," said Teal'c with the merest hint of exaggeration in his patient tone, "the device does not make one younger, but by keeping one alive when one would normally have died, appears to rejuvenate one."

Sam thought for a moment and then nodded slowly. "Maybe that's it. The Tok'ra haven't shared any information on the device, beyond what we needed to make more weapons against the Super Soldiers. Maybe this time we can study it ourselves! Assuming, of course, that they give it to us after all this, and it's not really damaged. With my shoulder injured, I never had a chance to look at that one you brought. . . ."

Sharabanou suddenly cut off Sam with a demand to go home _now_ ; apparently she had finished the last of her crackers. Or Daniel's.

Daniel put down his spoon and leaned back. Sleep was sounding good again.

*****

It was a busy day, between visits from half the SGC and translating for Sharabanou and the medical staff. Sharabanou had had more than enough of the medical staff and simply wanted to take her son home, but the General didn't want to open the Gate to send the two natives back only hours before SG-1 might go through.

Daniel was actually glad of the enforced naps at times and doubly glad when nighttime finally arrived, as much as it ever did underground. He'd been happy to see Bill and Nyan and sorry that the two had to leave very soon after they arrived, but he wasn't sorry when Edwards, Lorne, and Menard were shown the door. Or Woeste and Dixon. Or any of a number of other people whom he liked just fine but who were rather . . . loud. Why were they all visiting him anyway?

*****

The next morning, Daniel found himself on the elevator to the briefing room with Janet standing in silence, arms crossed, next to him. At least he'd finally gotten a proper shower. She probably wouldn't want to be in the same elevator with him if he hadn't.

"Look, it's just for a few hours at most!" he said apologetically.

"Not if I have my way," she finally said as the doors opened.

But Daniel knew that he had already won, or the General wouldn't be having this meeting in the briefing room. Yesterday afternoon's brief meeting of the full SG-1 had been held in the infirmary, though by then his head hardly ached at all and he was eating as normally as Janet allowed without feeling like he'd lose his lunch (or dinner, or anything else). They couldn't risk leaving the device lying around any longer than it already had, and everyone must be worried about Sharabanou and Zal by now; that could cost them needed trust. He'd won those points yesterday.

Janet unfolded her arms to walk down the hall with him, but her posture was still stiff. She'd forgive him eventually. She always did. Wait—didn't Jack say something like that about him? He could see as soon as he entered that his teammates were already seated. Jack was turning his chair from side to side; he might have been waiting there for a few minutes already.

"Doctor Jackson! Glad to see you up and about," General Hammond said, entering the  
briefing room from his office.

And dressed, Daniel added mentally. It was when she let him get dressed that he knew Janet had given in as well and was only raising token opposition, although her token opposition would put some Marines' active resistance to shame.

Janet didn't even wait until she was seated to start, "General, I really think it's too soon for Doctor Jackson to be going through the Gate." She sat down gracefully beside Teal'c and tossed a look at Daniel placing himself with just a little extra care in his usual chair next to Sam, letting him know that she had been watching him. "He had a serious concussion, a Grade 3 or even 4. We don't know exactly how long he was unconscious after the accident. The risks of reinjury are real, and honestly, General, Daniel has had so many concussions that I am very concerned at this point for his long-term health!" She was talking fast—probably afraid someone would interrupt her.

"Like Muhammad Ali?" Jack asked with a straight face.

Damn—Daniel had thought Jack was on his side.

"I won't get reinjured just going _through_ the Gate," Daniel said for at least the tenth time. "We have no reason to expect any problems on the other side—"

"—never do—" drifted across the table.

"—and I will be back in a few hours at most. Look, we can send the others through first, and I'll only go through if there's no problem."

Hammond turned to look at Jack. "Colonel, you seem to be opposed to Doctor Jackson's return?"

Jack straightened up in his chair. "Oh, no, sir. I think we just need to keep it short and sweet."

Daniel knew he could count on Sam, and sure enough, she began, "Sir, there _is_ a real danger that the Telchak device has been revealed, that people have learned about it and might try to use it."

"Though apparently none of them are going to try to use it to fix hearing damage."

"Jack!"

General Hammond cleared his throat. "One at a time, people."

"General, Sam's right," Daniel said. He added only mentally that of course she was right; he had been pushing that line of reasoning on her since yesterday afternoon. "Most of the people were completely unaware that the device even existed . . . two days ago." It took him just a moment to get his days straight. Not good. Janet's seat across the table and on a diagonal from him gave her an excellent vantage point to observe, and she was not impressed.

"Sir, we need to get the device. Daniel thinks we can go in quickly and easily to retrieve it, and then have a longer mission to finalize relations with these people in a few days, after he has recovered fully." Sam was very convincing. More convincing, Daniel realized, than he was. He should probably speak as little as possible.

"Not a few days," Janet said. "At least a week."

Definitely time to make a concession. "All right," Daniel said. "After I get back, I won't go out again for a week."

"This is _not_ _Let's Make a Deal_ , Doctor Jackson!" The slightly higher than normal pitch of the General's voice was probably meant to convey surprise, but Daniel was pretty sure there was amusement in there as well. "I was not aware that we had even fully ascertained that we needed to establish relations with these people."

Daniel could have made this case in his sleep. "We can always use more allies, General."

"Sir, if they have Telchak's device, who knows what else might be stored around there?" Sam again.

"I thought Doctor Jackson had indicated that they were not aware of any other technology," the General said, but he was obviously not surprised by the suggestion.

"Not in their town, no," Daniel confirmed. "But there _are_ other towns with whom they trade."

"But this was Telchak's main city, right?" Jack was getting involved.

"And at least one of those herbs Sam bought before coming back turns out to have unusual medicinal properties, sir," Janet added. That was news to Daniel. He didn't even know Sam had been looking at their herbs. When had she had time? And why was Sam giving Jack such a smug look? Jack shrugged at Sam.

"Sir, I think we should seriously consider establishing lasting relations with the people of P2R-251. Our return today will provide us with additional information. I have reason to suspect they were brought to the planet millennia ago, perhaps around the same time that the people of Abydos were settled there! And Sharabanou wants to go back with Zal," Daniel added. "As soon as possible."

Jack made a sound of disgust.

"I'm prepared to release Zal," Janet said to the General. "I had a long talk with his mother, and she'll keep him at home and limit his activities for at least a week." That significant look at the end was directed at Daniel.

"I can't believe she won't fix his hearing!"

"She doesn't think of it as _broken_ , Jack. She thinks of the deafness as enabling him to read," Daniel added with resignation. He'd made this point before and didn't have much hope it would work better a second time, but occasionally repetition did help with Jack.

"Well, that's just stupid."

"No, actually, it's not. If Zal could hear normally, they'd need him working in the fields already, and then hunting when he's older. While _we_ think of his deafness as a disability, Sharabanou thinks of it as protection, even _giftedness_. Because he can't hear, Zal—and his cousin—"

"—whom she doesn't want tested—" Jack interrupted.

"—Zal and his cousin are being given an educational opportunity they wouldn't otherwise get."

"And we're just letting her leave those boys deaf."

"Colonel," Janet weighed in, "even in this country, we would never make parents get cochlear implants for their children! It's a set of trade-offs. The hearing is never exactly what we might call normal. Adjustment can be very difficult, and the older the patient, the more difficult it gets. And cochlear implants require batteries!" She didn't have to add that that would mean many years of occasional shipments to the planet.

Daniel was certainly not opposed to making trips there, but he had to consider the boys' perspective too: who wanted to become reliant on equipment that would always need batteries from another world? And how long would the equipment last in a windswept sandy environment? He hadn't even thought to ask that until just now.

But Daniel put little quibbles out of his mind and followed up with his trump card, newly acquired in last night's conversations so that his teammates didn't even know it yet. "Sharabanou's husband was, like her son and nephew, blond, blue-eyed, and deaf. He was raised and trained as a scribe, but he rejected that profession." Sharabanou had described him as tall, and athletic, and unable to stay still for very long. Kind of like the man across the table from Daniel right now. "He insisted that he could hunt with the other men. And he was quite high functioning. He read lips and could speak coherently. He was a successful hunter."

Everyone was paying attention. Jack had even stopped fidgeting. "Until, of course, the day someone shouted out a warning that a leopard had gotten behind him, and he couldn't see the man's lips. He took five days to die from his injuries."

Jack's eyes narrowed. "So that excuses keeping the boys deaf?"

"She's a mother, Jack! Her son and nephew are safe and being raised in a highly honored profession for which they are apparently better suited than their father. She . . . she doesn't want to change. She doesn't want to change them. She believes they'll have long and happy lives this way."

Janet backed him up, of course. "Colonel, I've spoken with her more than once. She got over her initial anger at my . . . suggestion, and I believe her opposition is . . . rational."

Daniel's jaw tightened a little at that. Were they in a position to judge how _rational_ everyone they dealt with was? And how would they come out if others subjected them to such tests?

"Oh, come on! Did she ever _seriously_ consider what you were offering?" Jack demanded.

Janet was honest. "I don't think so, sir. She thinks they have a good life, and she doesn't want to change it."

"The boys don't even live at home."

"They live a ten-minute walk away, Jack. She sees them every day." He turned to the General. "Sir, we're not going to change Sharabanou's mind. She is perfectly within her rights. Now she just wants to get back home, bring her son home, see her nephew, and resume normal life. They don't like it here: they don't like the temperature, the food, the language. . . ."

"And we really need to get that device as soon as possible," Sam chipped in.

"All right. SG-1, you have a go. I'm scheduling your departure for 1900. Doctor Jackson, you will wait here until your teammates have verified that the planet is safe."

Daniel nodded.

*****

Jack was still troubled by the mother's refusal to allow her son even to be evaluated. If it were _his_ son. . . . But that was, as Daniel had said more than once, the point. It wasn't his son. Jack had thought too late of pointing out that if Zal's father had had an implant, he might still be alive. He doubted that would sway anyone. He had really thought he could get Daniel to convince the woman, but Daniel refused to pressure her. Why couldn't he use his stubbornness—and his arguments—on Sharabanou instead of his team leader?

Well, maybe if it _was_ his son, he'd be more worried about the surgery needed, and the possibilities for complications, and the boy having to learn to communicate differently. And about having to adjust to the difficulties as a parent. What if Charlie _had_ survived—maybe with hearing loss? Or loss of vision? He certainly wouldn't care any less for his son. He'd probably have been even more protective of him. He was certain he would have wanted to try this implant if his son had lost his hearing. But he couldn't worry about that, because it just wasn't an issue.

Sharabanou wasn't him and she wasn't Sara, and Zal was not Charlie. Nor was he Daniel—though perhaps some of Jack's horror at the prospect of the boy remaining deaf was left over from the terrible dread he'd felt when he'd thought the deaf boy _was_ Daniel, and wondered if he'd stay deaf.

Fortunately, Daniel was only deaf exactly when he wanted to be. "Continuing relations with the planet will mean that in the future, different people can make different decisions," Daniel said as he finished tying his bootlaces.

Jack could tell that bending over still brought unpleasant pressure to Daniel's head, but he didn't say anything. No point. Besides, Daniel might still be a little touchy over that whole adoption thing, or being left behind on the planet. Jack kept waiting for him to say something more about that; he hoped they were past it, but he wasn't certain.

"Sharabanou made a decision for _her_ son. We can talk to her brother- and sister-in-law about her nephew. But in any case, these boys won't be the last to . . . be born deaf. There is apparently a woman we _didn't_ see with the same coloring and disability, their current chief scribe, and she just got married a few months ago. I _think_ that word meant months. Have to ask Sam how long their months are."

Jack let out a sigh that he didn't mean to be audible. Daniel didn't seem to realize that he was beating a dead horse. Jack had conceded already.

"Anyway," Daniel added quickly, "The boys will probably both get married and have children eventually. And if we maintain relations, they might make a different choice for their own sons. But it will be their choice. And it will be an informed one." He finished tying his laces and looked straight at Jack. "They know their own lives, their own situations, better than we do."

Jack couldn't argue with that. The fact that he hadn't been arguing at all anymore seemed to elude Daniel entirely.

A few minutes later, the three fully able-bodied members of SG-1 stood in the Gateroom. Sharabanou and her son were soon in the control room above, with Daniel. The woman kept tossing hostile glances Jack's way. She did not appreciate the help he'd tried to offer. He had to admit that Daniel had been good about translating his final appeals to the woman, even though Daniel refused to take his side himself. Given Daniel's position on the matter, Jack might have wondered whether Daniel was translating what he said accurately, except that the mother's angry reactions sure seemed right.

Soon enough the wormhole was open. The MALP showed people at a distance; they seemed frightened, but that might just be because of the wormhole. He stepped through with Carter and Teal'c, all three of them ready for anything. It was, Daniel had told them reluctantly, "remotely" possible that the revelation of Telchak's device had caused some sort of upheaval, and anything could happen.

But apparently not much had. The three team members stepped through and looked around at the half-dozen or so people standing well back from the Gate. Jack wondered if they'd been here the whole time Zal had been on Earth, just waiting. Or had they taken turns?

Then a familiar figure walked slowly up to them. It was Kudadad, the priest. He'd been cleaned up, and he was wearing different clothes that weren't torn, but he was still moving stiffly, and bruises, cuts, and scratches were all visible on his face and arms. The worst cuts and abrasions seemed to have something slathered on them. "Zal? Sharabanou?" he asked with some urgency. "Daniyal?"

"Right behind us," Jack replied—in English, of course. "We needed to make sure everything was safe. Of course," he added to Carter, "I'm not sure how we determine that, other than that they didn't come at us with weapons."

He led the priest over to the MALP and began transmitting. "Talk into here," he said, indicating the screen. The man looked at him in complete perplexity, but Daniel's voice got his attention, and soon the two of them were chatting happily via the MALP, though the priest's eyebrows seemed to have gotten stuck very high on his forehead.

"Okay, Jack, we're coming through!" Daniel's sudden switch to English caught O'Neill's attention.

"So you've determined it's safe?" he asked, but Daniel's face was already being replaced by Hammond's.

"Yes, Colonel. I'm sending them through."

Carter and Teal'c had been standing guard while Jack's attention was focused on the priest and the MALP. He turned around and saw no change in the situation, but Kudadad had waved someone over—a boy almost twice Zal's age, but with similar coloring.

"His cousin!" Carter said with a smile.

The cousin reached the little group by the DHD just in time to see his aunt and Zal come through, and there was at once a joyful reunion. Jack was quite surprised to hear the older boy speaking rapidly with his aunt.

"Daniel?" he asked his smiling teammate.

"What?" Daniel asked without taking his eyes off the family.

"He's . . . talking."

Daniel did turn at that point to give Jack a confused look that Jack figured was a put-on. "Well, yeah."

"He's deaf. Isn't he?"

"Doesn't mean he's mute."

"But Zal doesn't talk!" Jack was pleased that Carter had turned to watch them quizzically but not taken Daniel's side.

"Zal _does_ talk. He just doesn't talk much yet. He's very—he's very shy, apparently. And I guess we'd say he's developmentally delayed on his speaking abilities. But he has already started reading and writing, and he's not even six yet—I think—so he's obviously ahead in other areas."

Daniel was going into lecture mode, and Jack tuned him out. He remembered one of Charlie's teachers telling him that kids all learned at their own pace—and, basically, that Jack shouldn't be too triumphant yet about Charlie's athletic abilities, for it was too early to be thinking about an athletic scholarship or a career in the pros. Jack hadn't really been planning either but had just talked about baseball to get this stupid parent-teacher conference off to a less awkward start. Sara had made him go to that one, but he had refused to go to any more after that. He wished now that he had.

But he was getting distracted. Daniel began talking to the priest but was not yet bothering to translate for anyone.

"Guess he told you," Carter said in an undertone.

"Excuse me?" Jack spun around, and Carter actually took a step back. He realized her comment had been for Teal'c to hear, not him.

"DanielJackson appears to be correct. These boys are not suffering because of their deafness. They seem to lead happy and useful lives," Teal'c observed.

Jack looked at Sharabanou and her sons. Yeah, they all had big dopey grins, but that seemed a stretch. "You can tell all that from looking at them?"

He didn't wait for an answer, instead tapping Daniel on the shoulder. "Anything we should know?"

Daniel said a few more words in Persian, stuck in "yeah" in English, and returned to Persian.

Jack sighed loudly. "Such _as_?"

Daniel held up a hand, waving away Jack. "In a minute." He continued his dialogue with the priest. After several more sentences, while Jack slouched further and further, hoping Daniel would notice, the linguist turned to him.

"Okay. Things _did_ get a little more complicated," Daniel told them.

Carter stiffened a little and continued watching the crowd (if you could call it that). Teal'c didn't even blink.

"But just a little. Naturally, everyone wanted to know what was going on, especially after _I_ came out; they wanted to know what I'd been doing in there. Sharabanou had suspected that I was involved from the start, because the three of you showed up and Kudadad tried to indicate to you that I was still up there, but the others didn't catch all this until they saw me come down. Apparently they then became afraid that I'd been vandalizing the temple. Glad they didn't think of that before I left here," he added as an aside. "Anyway, Kudadad tried to misdirect them, but a few of the people finally climbed up and went into the temple to find the wall half down.

"At first they were outraged and were afraid the aliens—that's us," Daniel added unnecessarily, "—had come to destroy their temple. So it was a good thing no one _did_ come in to get me out, as it happens. That's why Kudadad didn't insist you go up to help; he didn't want others coming along. And even Sharabanou didn't realize I was leading the efforts to, um, break down that wall. She thought I just talked the priests into something."

"She was _blaming_ you?" asked Carter in surprise. "We thought she was worried about you, and angry at us for not helping you."

"Well, you also thought I was five years old and deaf," Daniel added, with an easy smile that make it sound less critical.

"Cut to the chase," Jack told him. "Do we need to be worried? Where's the device?"

"It's okay," Daniel said. "Kudadad even walked back up there himself, even though he was . . . kinda banged up in the collapse. He tried to tell them that I'd left some things in there that needed to go back to Earth, but with the wall not fully down yet and the _herad_ still in there, that got tricky. The acolytes didn't tell exactly the same story, either. And then someone picked up my pack and found it only had a few blankets in it. They figured I was stealing something from their god.

"So Kudadad figured that we could come back at any moment, and he'd better—as you said, Jack, 'Cut to the chase.' So he told them the truth: that here was a magic device—"

Unusually, Teal'c interrupted. "The device is not magic."

"It is from their perspective," Daniel said.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," Carter said.

Daniel's near-monologue had ground to a halt so that he could stare at his teammate.

"What? Isn't that Sturgeon's Law?" Carter asked.

"Sturgeon's Revelation states that 90% of science fiction is crud," Teal'c said. Carter thought for a moment and nodded. Teal'c paused for effect before adding, "Because 90% of everything is crud."

"You're sure you didn't suffer head injuries?" asked Daniel.

Jack was inclined to agree for a moment, but only for a moment. "They got so entertained winding you up with the Stephen King and Reanimator stuff, they figured they'd keep going. Ignore them," Jack directed.

" _You_ brought up _Pet Sematary_ ," Carter said under her breath. "Sir."

Daniel did, however, ignore that, for which Jack was grateful. "So he explained there was a magic- _seeming_ device from Tel-Shak, and even the laypeople who can't read remember Tel-Shak; they still tell stories about him, and how the true god saved them. He told them about the bad effects of the machine, and added that he didn't think it should even be resting in a temple for their rescuer god, Khuda."

"The upshot is," Daniel said, coming to the conclusion with unusual speed, "they think the whole community needs to consult about whether we can take the device, but we're welcome to come to the discussions. In fact, Kudadad convinced them to wait for us."

"Nice of him." Jack checked his watch. They hadn't even been there for even twenty minutes yet. Janet seemed to think that Daniel would turn into a pumpkin if he stayed for long; she wanted him out of the sun, and back as soon as possible for another exam. Four hours was her absolute limit. Daniel had been desperate enough to go that he'd agreed. But Jack could tell Daniel's head was still bothering him from the way the linguist kept his hat pulled down to keep out any light getting around the sunglasses.

"Can we do this in some shade?" he asked Daniel.

After briefly conferring with the priest, Daniel nodded. "They've got a tent set up in the main square so that everyone who wants can attend."

"Democracy?" asked Carter in surprise.

Her question required Daniel to confer more with Kudadad, but at least he could do that while walking. The square wasn't far.

"The elders will make a final decision," Daniel finally said, "but everyone is welcome to the discussion."

"Who are the elders?" Jack asked. He didn't remember Daniel introducing anyone as such.

"The priests, the scribes, and the oldest generation of that family that hosted us that first night."

"We were only _here_ one night," Jack reminded Daniel. Daniel waved a hand dismissively. Jack couldn't decide if the occasional odd things coming out of Daniel's mouth were the result of the concussion, or just the usual sort of odd things Daniel was apt to say.

Soon they were in wide tent covering half the square. The edge of the fountain was even included under it so that the breeze from the north picked up a little of the moisture and spread it throughout the tent, but he knew it wouldn't help much once all the people arrived. Already there was an old man under the tent, lying on a pallet. Daniel went right up to him, slowly knelt beside him, and began talking.

"Daniel?"

"Oh, sorry, Jack. Guys. This is the retired high priest I told you about, Kudaram. He insisted he be brought when he heard what was up so that there wouldn't be any delay and he wouldn't miss anything when we got back." He then, of course, went back to talking to the old man.

A few other people had been in the tent, but they rushed off almost as soon as the team got there. The marketplace had been mostly closed; the big tent seemed to be partly made of some of the small tents that had stood around the square.

"They're assembling everyone," Daniel said. "People were starting to get tired of waiting for us to come back."


	7. Chapter 7

Daniel was grateful that it didn't take more than half an hour to get people together. The tent would soon be uncomfortably warm with all these bodies; it seemed like every adult in the city was here. Daniel's head still hurt just a little, and he had to be mindful of Janet's time limit. He had no doubt the SGC would recall them if they stayed too long, and Janet said he couldn't go again for a week. He sure as hell didn't want to wait a week to settle this.

Most people had brought low stools to sit, and someone had thought to bring extras for the team, for which Daniel was grateful. Kudadad stood near the south end of the tent, with people packing most of the area around him.

"Nobody will be able to hear him," Jack said softly to him.

"I can hear you, and you're whispering!" Daniel pointed out. "What do you think people did before microphones were invented?"

Jack had an answer, but Daniel shushed him so that he could hear what Kudadad had to say. He felt a little smug when the group quickly fell silent and Kudadad's ordinarily soft voice carried surprisingly well. The man had obviously learned to project, as Daniel had expected.

Kudadad gave such a brief summary of the events leading to this meeting that it was clear everyone had already heard the story one way or another.

"What's he saying?" Jack asked.

"It's the recap for those who didn't tune in last week," Daniel said in exasperation. This meeting could last the rest of their time on the planet today. He didn't need Jack constantly interrupting and breaking his focus. And he didn't need those dim looks a couple of people threw Jack for talking while their priest was talking.

Kudadad continued by giving his reasons for secrecy and for his willingness to give the machines to the strangers. Then he pointed to a woman.

The woman stood and asked if the machine was dangerous, might not the travelers use it against them?

Kudadad called on Sharabanou to speak to the good intentions of the strangers. Sharabanou spoke at some length. She had a few words of vituperation for Jack for wanting to take away what made her sons special; naturally, Jack caught his name and was poking Daniel's arm to get explanation while Daniel was still trying to listen.

"Actually, Jack," he was able to say after a few more pokes and tugs, "she's saying that no one forced anything on Zal, despite the fact that you obviously _wanted_ to, so she trusts the Tau'ri. And she didn't like what you were saying, but you never tried to trick or lie to her. So you won us some points."

"Good!" Jack seemed very pleased, and he stopped poking.

Someone else in the crowd was recognized by Kudadad and pointed out that these strangers had only helped when their own actions had hurt Zal. Daniel winced a little at that. This was not charity; it was a matter of honor, the man continued. If they had not made good on. . . .

Jack was poking at him again. Daniel slapped his hand away. "You complain when I tell you too much!" he hissed. "Don't worry, I'll give you the important bits."

"The bits _you_ think are important," grumbled Jack.

More discussion followed. And more. Kudadad did defend Daniel, saying he wasn't to blame for the accident, and Daniel was grateful, though he didn't entirely believe that. If he hadn't been trying to keep Jack and Teal'c out. . . . And part of that was purely selfish. He didn't want to wait for them to arrive. He didn't want to hear Jack say disparaging things about the temple. He didn't want to be apologizing for Jack's lack of reverence.

People were still concerned, however, that the _herad_ was a weapon that could be used against them. They didn't like outsiders taking their things. Someone thought Khuda was punishing Daniel and preventing him from taking the device by making the wall fall on him. Another noted that Zal had been hurt worst, and surely they did not believe Khuda would punish an innocent? Yet others pointed out that Tel-Shak had brought them no good, and one said it was never right to store Tel-Shak's demonic device in the temple of Khuda; it was no healer, but a bewitcher, if the stories that Kudadad was telling them were true. For Kudadad was indeed hauling out stories long forgotten by everyone but the priests and scribes. The anxiety on his face was evident even to Jack, who got worried, but Daniel was able to reassure him that Kudadad was not worried the tide was turning against them, but simply reluctant to tell the horrifying stories he knew.

A woman near the front agreed. Daniel heard Sam gasp when the woman stood to speak; she had hair a little lighter than Daniel's, and it had probably been blonder when she was younger. Daniel could make out irregularities in her vowels especially; she was probably deaf, but she seemed to communicate pretty effectively. So this was the lead scribe they'd mentioned; the priests had told Daniel that she was a woman. She was obviously taking the same tack as the priest: Khuda had never punished them; he was a good god, and he did not knock walls over on people.

The discussion was very orderly. People listened quietly with only occasional murmurs. It took Daniel a while to figure out that speakers simply caught Kudadad's eye with a small head motion to be recognized. Even Kudaram spoke, though he did not rise to do so.

When someone suggested they test the device's healing effects for themselves before making any decisions, and others seemed to take up the cry, Daniel grew concerned.

"Daniel?" Jack asked, drawing his name out. "Head bothering you, or things turning against us?"

"Some of them want to try the device," Daniel explained. "I'm just . . . worried."

"Oh, _that's_ a bad idea!" Jack stuck his hand in the air.

"Jack, what are you doing?"

"Sir, no one else is raising a hand!" Carter whispered, looking around nervously.

There was a silence, and then Kudadad pointed with hesitation and asked Daniel if Jack wanted to speak.

"Yes," Daniel answered simply. "May I translate?"

The two men stood.

"I think you people have every right to know what you're getting into and what you're giving up," Jack started. Daniel stumbled through the colloquialisms and managed to render the sentence decently. "But first-hand experience is _not_ the way to do it." God. The concussion was still slowing him down. Shouldn't he be over it by now? Janet _had_ reminded him that he wasn't as young as he used to be.

"I want you to hear what happened when we found the device on _my_ planet," Jack said. Daniel managed not to flinch. "Daniel here"—Jack clapped a hand on his shoulder and left it there. No, Jack, he thought; it was too hot for that. He was also afraid Jack would overbalance him if they stood that way for long. "Daniel here went looking for this thing on Earth. With a friend of his, Bill Lee. And they found. . . ." Jack paused. "They found people who were willing to torture and even kill to find out why it was valuable and what it did and how."

Daniel hesitated for just a moment. That wasn't the whole story; Jack didn't mention that the men would have tortured and killed them for ransom alone, or for anything they'd happened to find, or maybe just because they were sadists. Raphael got way too much pleasure out of hurting people. But it was true enough. If they hadn't had the box, maybe Raphael would have just left him and Bill to suffer the heat and hunger and thirst out in the shack while waiting for ransom money. Daniel rushed to translate so that no one would notice his hesitation, but he paused twice in the middle to emphasize that he needed some time to find the words and cover any hesitation they had noted.

"You've gotten to know Daniel here a bit." Jack lifted his hand and dropped it again on Daniel's shoulder. Daniel winced a little as it fell on a bruise, and Jack finally moved his hand and arm away. "He's the good guy. He's the guy who always wants to talk and doesn't want to shoot. We've got the big guns, he's got the little one, and he hardly ever uses his anyway."

"Slow down!" Daniel hissed once he'd finally gotten through that. He did wonder a little if he'd just had his manhood insulted, but he didn't have time to worry about that.

"He wants to help. He hurt his head pretty bad two days ago, but he insisted on translating between the doctors and Sharabanou so that Sharabanou knew how Zal was. He's saved . . . he's saved at least two planets' worth of people." Daniel caught his breath at that. As glad as he was to have helped Earth and Kelowna, the loss of Abydos still burned, even though he knew that Skaara and his good father had found peace at last, and an existence for which they were doubtless better suited than Daniel himself. "Planets with a lot more people than yours."

"I'm not sure that's helpful," Daniel shot back, but he translated it anyway.

"Daniel wouldn't take it away if he thought it could help you. He worked hard to restore a weather device someone from our planet had . . . um, borrowed without permission—"

"Jack, are you sure you know what you're doing?"

"Hey, the priest and Zal's mom told them I'm a straight shooter. I'm gonna go with that."

Daniel translated.

"He went to help some people whose defense device had been broken, though he could have been tortured or killed.

"And this is the man who tried to get that device on our planet, but the men who _wanted_ it beat him, wouldn't give him food or water for days . . . electrocuted him. . . ." Jack was slowing down.

"They didn't _electrocute_ me; I'm not dead! Besides, how do I translate 'electrocute' for people who have no electricity?" Daniel hissed.

"Figure something out. You're the translator."

Daniel settled for "burned." He could see people in the crowd stiffening; he didn't know whether it was from the abuse described, or from mistrust of the story and its tellers.

"They tortured his friend too, until Lee finally told them what they thought the device would do. And then they figured out how to turn it on."

Daniel really didn't want to remember this part. It was bad enough to remember up to that point. He looked down at Sam for strength, but she was looking at the ground, her shoulders tight. She didn't want to hear the story again either. Daniel had never told her much about what had happened, but he knew Jack had filled in Sam and Teal'c.

"Then they brought _Daniel_ here back in to help them. They didn't know that turning it on was enough; they wanted to know more. But Daniel wouldn't tell them anything else, because he had a really strong suspicion that whatever they did with it wasn't going to be good."

Daniel was fervently praying that Jack wouldn't go into the whole sarcophagus addiction too and nearly lost his place in the translation.

"Daniel, why don't you pick up this next bit?" Jack said suddenly. 

"What? It's your story!"

"No, it's _your_ story! Besides, they trust you more. I'm not sure why I'm even the one telling it so far."

He couldn't well say, "because I don't want to." He didn't want to. But it might be enough to convince these people to give up the dangerous device. He took a deep breath and told them, in their own language, "Jack wasn't actually there for all this; he heard it from me and Bill Lee. So he thinks I should tell it now.

"The machine had been on for a while before they even dragged me in, I think. And I told them to turn it off. I told them what could happen. . . ." There was no avoiding the sarcophagus, was there? He could make it short, though. "Something like that had healed me before, only I . . . I was . . . I used it too much, and I . . . changed. I hurt my friends. I almost killed Jack." No one moved at all, except Sam, who looked up. She must have caught the tremor in his voice, and heard Jack's name, but she couldn't know what he was saying. "So I knew what it could do, and I was afraid even to be near it. After the other time, I'd gotten better, but this device was a bit different, and I didn't know. . . ."

He needed to be more coherent. "I told them I would not help them, except to turn it off. Make it not work anymore," he added when he saw confusion. "We argued. They beat me. They . . . burned me some more. But I kept telling them _why_ , how harmful it was, and one of the men started to believe me. And so their leader shot him, killed him, at once."

He had everyone's complete attention. No one stirred. His friends were all looking up at him, also stock still. He wondered what they thought he was saying.

"They put me back in the shack with Bill after that. I think they figured they didn't need me. They had started to notice that they felt really good. And it does feel good—but it changes you. I knew we had to run before they killed us; I was not certain whether that would be before or after they killed each other.

"I guess the machine helped heal me, too, because even with no food and just rainwater for three days, I felt stronger again. I found a loose board, and we broke out of the shack and ran. Bill fell down; the machine had not been working while he was near it. He could not get back up. So I hid him and ran."

He could feel sweat rolling down his body. It was so dry here, though, that the light breeze carried most of the sweat away. Not like in that jungle. "I was still hurt, though, and I could not run fast. They found me, and shot me in the leg, and I fell. They . . . they were going to kill me. The leader had a big knife. He did not want . . . he had a gun, but shooting me would be too quick. He only shot me in the leg so that I could not run. He said he would . . . cut me up, and he pulled out a big knife. That was . . . that was the work of the machine. He was never a _nice_ man, but after it was turned on, he wanted to . . . mutilate me even more than he wanted to kill me. And he wanted me to die slowly."

"I picked up a rock," Daniel remembered. It seemed dumb now, but he hadn't been reasoning at the time. "But then suddenly, Jack found me. He and a . . . friend had been looking for me and Bill. He shot the men before they c-could hurt me."

"Do you want to tell this bit?" he asked Jack.

"What bit?" Jack replied irritably, and he remembered that none of them could follow.

"The bit after you found me."

"You do it, and I'll chip in later if you need me."

Daniel really didn't want to, but he _had_ his audience, and he'd better keep going. "So Jack wrapped my injured leg, and we started to go back for Bill. But the man . . . the man who had been shot, who had been dead, had been lying near the machine while it was on. The machine _changed_ him. He came through the jungle. . . . He shot at us, Jack shot back—and the bullets could not stop him. He had been healed, and all he wanted to do was _kill_." Daniel took a deep breath.

"It took Jack's friend, with a really, really big weapon, to . . . destroy the man. They had to destroy his body to stop him." And then _he_ was in little pieces, not Daniel, Daniel remembered he had thought somewhat hysterically at the time.

"The machine heals people. But . . . well, it heals their _bodies_. They aren't the same anymore. It heals their bodies but ruins their"—he fumbled for the word for a moment and had to hope he'd gotten it right—"soul. Souls. I was only near it a few minutes—not long enough to heal my burns all the way, or to make the bullet hurt less when it hit my leg. So I . . . did not change. But the man who came back from the dead? He was . . . not even really a man anymore. He just wanted to hurt and kill. And the other men, the men who did not die right away but stood by the _herad_ too long—they had already been . . . hurtful people. They became worse."

Kudadad recognized someone. "If you used it briefly," she asked, "and it helped heal you, perhaps it is safe for short periods of time?"

Daniel shook his head. "We do not know how short. And. . . ." He didn't want to go on. He had barely admitted it to himself. "I . . . Maybe I lied a little. Because I am . . . ashamed. I _was_ changed." He hesitated. But he had to say it. It might be enough to convince these people. "I do not think I could have saved myself with a rock. I wanted to try. But even more than that: if I could not save myself, I wanted at least to hurt the men who had hurt me. I wanted it very, very badly. And when Jack came and shot them. . . ." He could not finish.

He had felt shock, and a little euphoria. But mostly shock at first. And then, as he was limping slowly back to the camp with Jack's help and a makeshift crutch, he'd recalled the men going down in front of him. And he'd remembered Chalo being blown to bits. And that hysteria he felt when he saw _Chalo_ cut to pieces, rather as Raphael had threatened him, turned into a wild, savage triumph. He replayed the scene in his head until they got back to the camp, and then he and Bill had to get the machine and turn it off. He saw the blood on the floor and felt great surge of satisfaction, even elation, but then he realized he was looking at the wrong place, and there wasn't enough of it. That wasn't Chalo's blood; that was his and Bill's. There was Chalo's, a big, sticky pool of blood swarming with flies. He could still smell burnt flesh, his and Bill's, and he vomited the water that Jack had given him as they came back. Then the two of them turned off the machine. Jack had been checking the perimeter, making sure there was no one who had been missed and no one coming back to life, so he hadn't seen Daniel getting sick. Daniel told Bill and Burke not to tell Jack. They didn't.

The spell had been broken there in the shack. He felt stabs of guilt for the joy he'd found in the destruction of others, and the exhilaration vanished. Then the stabbing sensation felt more like burns than guilt, and the two of them hobbled back outside to report to Jack, and Daniel had been about ready to collapse when Jack made him sit under a tree to wait for air rescue and gave him some more water.

He'd been silent too long, and Sam was tugging at his pants leg. "I felt . . . happy when Jack killed them. I felt . . . very happy. And I have never felt that before. I have had to kill, many times, always to save lives. I would never kill . . . otherwise. But I have never . . . rejoiced at killing the way I did that day. So the machine _did_ change me.

"The effects . . . ended. I have not enjoyed killing again, and I hope I never do." He fumbled a bit more, trying to find the precise words he needed: "Relief, even satisfaction that an enemy, one who would kill me and those I care about. . . was dead? I do know that feeling. But until that day, I never felt joy at killing." He remembered belatedly the dream Shifu had given him, but then he thought that he had not felt joy then, just satisfaction. Maybe even triumph. But not joy. "And I never want to feel that again. The machine. . . . What good is it to heal your son or daughter, your wife or husband or friend, if they now take joy in hurting? In killing?

"The machine is _wrong_. It is bad. The one who created it . . . pretended to be a god. He was not. He and others like him made _other_ devices that can heal. Some are dangerous, very dangerous, but not quite as dangerous as this; it was one of those other devices that taught me Tel-Shak's would be dangerous." He could mention the hand-operated healing device that even the Tok'ra used, but that would require too much explanation, and maybe work against his point, and he was running out of steam.

"If that device stays here, someone will give in to temptation. Even we will not keep it. We will not use it; we will study it, and then give it to people—allies, friends—who can, we hope, learn to make better healing devices from it. And when they have learned all they can, they will destroy the _herad_. Safely."

Daniel looked around at the silent faces. He could read shock and horror. He hoped he hadn't just turned them against him with his confession. He had told them things he had not said out loud before, not even to MacKenzie; he barely even admitted the truth to himself. And here he'd said it right in front of all his teammates, and they didn't understand. He was relieved they couldn't understand, but at the same time, he wished just a little that they could.

He sat down quickly and hard, his legs deciding to give up a little before they should have. "What the hell was that?" Jack asked. He was looking closely at Daniel. He might not know the words, but Daniel realized his face had been an open book. "What did you tell them? Did you tell them about the sarcophagus addiction?" Jack guessed. Of course: he'd read Daniel's guilt, but he didn't know that Daniel had anything to feel guilty about for the Central American expedition. Sam and Teal'c were watching him intently too. He could feel the blush in his face, probably making it nearly as red as Sam's had been.

"Later," Daniel promised.

Kudadad stood and spoke again. Daniel was stunned to realize what the man was saying. His own confession had prompted the priest to make one, and the priest told how close he had come to using the machine to save his fellow priest. In fact, _he_ had started to take down the wall, but he had not been able to succeed. It was not poor maintenance. He'd tried to break it down. But he'd done so alone, and then tried to cover it up, so he hadn't succeeded. Daniel wondered idly if the attempt and disguise together had led to whatever mistake brought half the wall down on them. There might have been weaknesses he should have seen, but that Kudadad had covered up, and the flickering light of the torches wasn't a great help.

Kudadad looked at the ground, not at the people, as he confessed. His voice seemed very quiet, and yet it carried.

"What's happening?" Jack whispered.

"Later," Daniel hissed again.

"O'Neill," Teal'c whispered. He pointed to his watch.

"Crap," said Jack. "We've got to get you back to the Gate."

Daniel looked at his own watch. How had time passed so quickly? He had maybe forty minutes left before he was due, and it took ten to get to the Gate.

Kudadad trailed off, and Jack whispered to Daniel. "Tell him we have to send you back," he said. "Explain that you're still recovering—"

"I know what to say," Daniel answered irritably before catching himself. That tone wasn't going to make his recovery look so good. "We have thirty minutes left."

 

Of course, forty-five minutes later discussions showed little sign of winding down, and Jack finally made Daniel tell Kudadad he _had_ to go back. The priest repeated the announcement to the crowd, saying something about Daniel's injuries, and, to his surprise, Daniel could see open sympathy on several faces. Of course, if he looked as bad as he felt, it was no wonder.

Jack told Teal'c and Sam to "keep an eye on things" until he got back from walking Daniel to the Gate.

"But we have no idea what they're saying!" Sam hissed.

"I think they respect us just for being here and sitting with them," Daniel whispered back. "They know we're letting them do things their way, and we're not using force." It was true.

He wouldn't admit it, but he was grateful that Jack insisted on walking him back. Normally he'd enjoy the sun's warmth, but today the brightness just made his head ache. It had taken a lot of work to follow the discussion, let alone contribute to it, and he didn't need the extra reason for his head to hurt.

Just as he expected, they had walked less than half the distance in silence before Jack asked what he'd told them in his long speech in the tent. When Daniel told a condensed version in English, Jack stopped walking.

"What?" Daniel asked, alarmed. He couldn't see Jack's eyes because of those damned sunglasses. Did Jack think less of him now?

Jack pressed his lips tightly together, and he was slow to respond. "Why the hell didn't you _say_ something?" he finally asked.

"About. . . ?" Of course, he knew what Jack meant, but he didn't know what else to say.

"What good does it do to go to a shrink if you don't _tell_ him anything? And you're the one who always picks MacKenzie, damned if I know why," Jack added.

"I. . . ." What was Jack mad about? That he hadn't dumped his guilt on the others? He answered the easy part first. "I _know_ MacKenzie. And he's . . . he's probably about as good as . . . shrinks get."

"So why didn't you tell him?"

Daniel frowned. They weren't moving, which was not going to make things better with Janet, and—"How do you know I didn't tell him?"

"Because you're so damned embarrassed to tell _me_! And you wouldn't be if you'd told MacKenzie!"

That was so illogical Daniel had to laugh, though laughing didn't help his head. "I just told a whole _town_ full of strangers. And you think I wouldn't have been embarrassed if I'd told MacKenzie?"

"Nooo," said Jack as if it were obvious. "I think you'd have . . . worked through this shit better! And you'd have told me _before_ you told a whole village full of strangers! Isn't that _why_ you see MacKenzie?"

Jack wasn't making any sense. He saw MacKenzie so he didn't _have_ to tell his friends what had happened, not to make it _easier_ to repeat his stories. Well, that and because the SGC required its personnel to see a psychiatrist after torture as a condition of returning to active duty. "Even if I had 'worked through'—"

"No."

"No?"

"No, we are not going to argue about my wording or pick apart my logic. You _always_ distract me that way, and then I forget what I was saying!" Jack was flat-out yelling now. Daniel really wished he wouldn't. Not now. "The point _is_ , you _didn't_ tell MacKenzie. If you had told MacKenzie, you'd have already told me how _wrong_ I was when I said you didn't, instead of asking it as a question!"

"Oh." He was right, Daniel supposed. If he'd understood Jack correctly. Why was Jack talking about this anyway? He'd said after they got back from Central America that he was there if Daniel needed to talk, but he'd seemed relieved when Daniel had nothing to share at that time, and he'd never brought it up again.

"And the main point is, why _didn't_ you tell MacKenzie? Or us?"

"Like you needed to hear more horror stories from down there?" There was no one he would rather have had rescue him. But he hated the fact that Jack knew so much of what happened. He would have preferred no one ever see that godforsaken place. Of course he didn't want to tell Jack! And Jack didn't really want to hear it! Sam had been having enough problems, with her two encounters with Kull warriors, plus a head injury in between on the Prometheus. And Teal'c? Teal'c would just have gotten that guilty look, as if he should somehow have been able to protect Daniel even though they'd all agreed that sending Teal'c on this little expedition would only draw more attention and that Teal'c was needed to help Sam and Jacob.

MacKenzie was, after all, paid to listen to these things. And MacKenzie didn't get any guilt from hearing it. Occasionally, he even chipped in something useful.

His question obviously wasn't enough to stop Jack. "You got so damned pissed that we _might_ have adopted you, if the machine had . . ." Jack waved a hand vaguely, "made you a kid again. So you don't want us protecting you, but you're trying to protect _us_ from . . . from what? You think you're the only person who ever feels stuff like that?"

"Do you ever _enjoy_ killing?" Daniel demanded. "I know you don't, because—"

"What? Do you have any idea how much I enjoyed shooting those bastards who tortured you?" Jack shouted back, stepping even closer to Daniel with a finger pointed at his face. Daniel flinched, but Jack didn't even notice. "I don't look forward to killing people, I don't do it for fun, but when people harm one of my team, hell yeah! I probably enjoyed shooting those bastards a hell of a lot more than you enjoyed it!" He added a moment later, "And I was jealous of Burke because he had the damned grenade launcher, which must have been much more satisfying!"

His surprise at Jack's response, the heat of the day, and the fact that somehow he couldn't seem to get enough sleep since the temple wall collapsed finally caught up with Daniel. His knees started to give way. Jack suddenly had one hand on his back and the other on his arm and slowed his descent pretty well, so that Daniel just sat on the ground rather than falling over. It was still a little bumpy, though: it was only when he hit the ground, and his teeth clicked together painfully, that he realized his mouth must have been hanging open.

"Sorry," Jack said quietly, hunkering down next to him. "I just . . . how can you be so damned stupid?" Jack picked up a pebble and flung it away.

"I was gonna tell MacKenzie," Daniel said in a low voice. "I just hadn't . . . I hadn't gotten to it yet."

"Because you had so much other—" Jack started sarcastically, but he cut himself off. "Yeah, I guess you might have had some other things to talk about," he said in a more subdued voice.

Yeah. Mostly, he'd talked about Bill and how much better he should have been prepared to protect Bill and get him through it all. It was exasperating that MacKenzie couldn't tell him how Bill was doing; he respected MacKenzie for refusing to drop the slightest hint, even in a flicker of reaction to what Daniel said, but that didn't make it any less frustrating. He couldn't argue with Bill's insistence that he was fine, because he was afraid Bill was imitating Daniel's own stock answer. He felt even worse about what had happened to Bill than he did about his own reaction to their torturers' deaths. And then Sam and the Prometheus had gone missing, and he didn't feel like it was right to worry about his own problems, and he'd cancelled that session with MacKenzie.

"Well, now you know," Daniel said at last. "And not a moment too soon, because Janet is going to kill me as soon as I get back to Earth."

Jack chuckled a little. "You _do_ know that it's normal, and it's not your fault?" he asked as he helped Daniel up.

Daniel moved his head too fast to look at Jack's face and nearly fell down again. "I know what it's like to be glad someone's dead because they can't hurt you anymore," he said when he was steadier. "I know what it's like . . . I was so glad every time Apophis died, or I thought he was dead. But I have _never_ felt so . . . elated at another human being being killed." He reran that last sentence in his head; that didn't sound quite right.

"Good," said Jack. "So why did you tell the nice people in the audience about this, when you wouldn't even tell your best friends?"

Well, they were on their feet now, but not moving. Daniel frowned at Jack. Janet was right: he wasn't quite ready for all this. Jack had adopted a condescending tone, as if everything was obvious, but Daniel was reluctant to answer when he wasn't sure exactly where this was going.

In the same tone, and speaking maddeningly slowly, Jack continued, "You told the nice people that story to convince them that the machine changes people. And you are absolutely right. You felt relieved that you outlived the bad guys who wanted to kill you; that's natural. What the machine _made_ you feel about their deaths wasn't normal, and it's not your fault, and—God, didn't we already cover this? Oh, like, four years ago?"

That was quite a speech for Jack, and apparently he couldn't stop his natural sarcasm from creeping back in at the end. But Daniel was still puzzled. "Four years ago?"

"Shyla?"

"That was five and a half years ago." Daniel started walking, and Jack fell in next to him.

He was going to add more about how the sarcophagus was totally different, and he didn't find any joy in hurting anyone during his addiction, but Jack interrupted, "Same thing. You missed a year, anyway."

"You just always have to be right, don't you?"

Jack gave him a huge grin. Daniel supposed he had just admitted that Jack was right. Well, he was. Not about the dates, but about the device.

*****

Back at the SGC, Janet checked him over and confined him to the infirmary for the rest of the day. She was obviously irritated that he was late; her shoulders were tight and she didn't have much to say to him, but at least she didn't read him the riot act. After Daniel lay down, he realized that his lack of argument might have convinced her that he needed rest more than remonstration. That was the infirmary, he thought sleepily. Rest and remonstration. And Janet gave her word that no one would wake him up every hour or two.

 

He awoke to find Bill Lee shuffling into the room. He fumbled his glasses on while Bill came over to his bed. Bill looked worried. He tended to look like that much of the time anyway, but Daniel was pretty sure he was truly worried this time. More so than when Bill and Nyan had visited him . . . was that just the day before? No, day before that.

"Hey, Bill."

"Hey, I heard they let you go to the planet, and now you're back here!"

"Well, I was always going to be back here anyway," Daniel said, trying to allay Bill's concern. "Janet only let me go on the condition that I be back in four hours, and I didn't quite make it."

Bill looked somewhat relieved. "So, how are you feeling?"

Daniel nearly said, "Fine"; it was almost an automatic response, and easier than dealing with Bill right now, but it was also what Bill kept telling him. He had to stop the cycle. It was time to fish or cut bait. Or was that shit or get off the pot? He knew both expressions perfectly well until Teal'c asked him one day what each meant and what the difference was, and now he couldn't use either. He did wonder if Teal'c really knew the answer already and was just asking to see if he could confuse him. He'd have to wait for Jack to use them both again and try to sort it out. Meanwhile, Bill looked even more anxious and began playing with the buttonholes on his lab coat.

"I feel like crap," Daniel told him.

Bill's eyes grew big, but he seemed at a loss for words and stood there with his mouth a little bit open.

"It's not true. SG-1 doesn't heal faster than anybody else," Daniel said. "Unless we have a sarcophagus or something." He didn't add that he detested the things.

"But—" Bill broke off. "Wow. I thought . . . I mean, I know you get hurt, I've _seen_ you get hurt, but you never let it stop you."

Daniel let his eyes close. They wanted to anyway, and there was no point in trying to maintain even the vestiges of a front now. "I couldn't afford to let it stop me in Honduras. Or Nicaragua. Wherever we were."

"But _I_ did."

"I was in the room while the machine was on. It had started healing me."

"But—"

"I've told you before, Bill: that's why I could run, and you couldn't. You weren't in there. I got shot, you didn't, but we both spent the same amount of time in the infirmary! Your burns got infected. Mine didn't. Didn't you wonder why?" Hadn't he already _told_ Bill why? Daniel was pretty sure he had.

"So . . . do you feel . . . lucky?"

Daniel opened his eyes. "Clint Eastwood?"

"What?"

Great. The one time he knew a movie reference, the guy wasn't actually making it. "Why are you asking me if I feel lucky?"

"Because you're supposed to, right?"

"I'm supposed to feel lucky that the wall fell on me but I didn't break any bones? Or I'm supposed to feel lucky that my burns and bullet wound didn't get infected when we were . . . ?" God, he needed more sleep for this.

"Well, both! I mean. . . ." Bill looked kind of guilty. Way to go, Daniel. The man obviously needs more guilt.

"Why are you asking?" Daniel asked more patiently. Then the proverbial light bulb went on. "Did you think _you_ should feel lucky after we got back? That you hadn't been shot?"

"Well, yeah! I mean, people _told_ me how lucky I was." Bill stuffed his hands as deep as they would go in the pockets of his lab coat, which wasn't really very deep. Both pockets looked about to tear. "That I was lucky not to get shot, that I was lucky to have you to protect me, that we were both lucky that Colonel O'Neill found us in time."

"And you don't feel lucky," Daniel nodded. Neither did he, at the time. Nor right this moment, for that matter. He just felt tired. But he wasn't about to tell Bill that he'd done a terrible job of protecting the other man, because then Bill would be trying to allay _his_ guilt.

"Hell, no! Luck would be if we hadn't been kidnapped! Or threatened and tortured! Luck would be if they'd all killed each other that first day! Or if we'd been rescued before. . . ." Bill broke off, ashamed. Daniel could guess: if they'd been rescued before Bill talked.

"You're right," Daniel told him. His eyes wanted to close again, but he wasn't going to let them. "People . . . people tell you how lucky you are because they don't know what else to say. And . . . well, they don't want to say, 'Poor you, how awful,' because . . . they don't want to get you down again. And because you're always supposed to be grateful to be alive, no matter how bad it is."

Daniel knew some people thought he'd given up when he ascended. But he hadn't just been _leaving_ ; he had been _going_ somewhere new, someplace with tremendous potential, even if ascension didn't turn out to be all he thought. He didn't just want to live, to survive. He wanted to _do_ something, and ascension offered that possibility.

And even with the ache in his heart in the place that Abydos used to occupy, he couldn't quite regret his choice to ascend. He wondered exactly what he'd been thinking that he'd managed to get Abydos destroyed, and the loss still hurt deeply. But he knew he'd saved Teal'c and Bra'tac when they would have died, even if he had only the merest wisps of memory of having done so, and he'd helped Jack when Jack needed him. Jack insisted Anubis would have destroyed Abydos anyway, one way or another, eventually, and that the Abydonians were happy ascended. They probably were.

Most selfishly, Daniel been able to come back fully healed of the radiation poisoning, to resume his place on the team, his place in what really was his world—and, in some ways, to remake it. Being dead for a year gave you some perspective. There were things he could remember weighing on him terribly before he died. They weren't gone, and they hadn't stopped bothering him entirely, but most had faded to the memory of pain more than remaining pain itself.

He wasn't really willing to share all that with Bill, though. How he felt about his death and return was still too private; maybe it always would be. He hadn't even spoken much with his teammates about it.

Bill was looking at him, obviously not sure what to say. He dropped his gaze when Daniel made eye contact again.

"Have you talked with MacKenzie about this?" Daniel asked instead.

Bill studied the floor.

"It's what he's _there_ for, you know. You tell him, and then he can tell you it's _normal_ to feel that way, and that you don't have to listen to what anyone else tells you about how you should feel." For crying out loud, what _was_ the man telling MacKenzie if he hadn't told him that? Now Daniel could see why Jack had gotten upset with him earlier.

"You tell MacKenzie stuff?' Bill asked, now playing with a loose thread around a buttonhole.

"Yes," Daniel said patiently.

"Why? I mean, aren't you afraid he'll. . . ." Bill waved a finger around his ear. He hadn't been at the SGC yet when Daniel had been committed due to Machello's bugs, but everyone knew about it.

"Actually, that's one of the reasons I stick with MacKenzie. He's _never_ going to just lock me in a padded room again." Daniel smiled a little. "He screwed up, he knows it, and he owes me. I suppose after all these years he may not still think he owes me," he amended, "but he's never going to assume I'm mentally ill, if something happens. He's always going to look for another cause. He _does_ learn from his mistakes. And he made that mistake, but he's done a lot of good, too. He hypnotized Sam so that she could remember—well, that was before your time. He helped when . . . when I had a dozen people from the Stromos downloaded into my head. And after."

"Well, the rest of us don't have that kind of assurance." Bill met his eyes again. "He doesn't owe me."

"You're. . . ." Daniel stopped. He didn't want to say 'afraid,' but he didn't know what else to say. "You . . . think MacKenzie is going to have you committed?" He couldn't keep the disbelief out of his voice.

Bill hung his head. "Yeah, it sounds kinda dumb when you say it like that."

"MacKenzie made a mistake with Machello's bug. So did Janet. I still let her treat me, and so do you," Daniel pointed out. "And she doesn't make a lot of mistakes. Neither does MacKenzie. Hell, he hardly knew Teal'c before Apophis brainwashed him again, but he knew when Teal'c was playing him. He played along so that we could call in Bra'tac and confront Teal'c . . . and we got Teal'c back. And playing along wasn't the safest thing MacKenzie could have done," Daniel added. "It put him awfully close to a very large, very strong, _very_ homicidal Jaffa."

Bill shuddered, but he chuckled too.

"MacKenzie really _does_ know his stuff, as much as any shrink." Daniel refrained from giving his general opinion of the profession. "Tell him what's going on," he pleaded. "Or tell _me_ , even. God, you've been feeling this for . . . weeks, and you never said anything!" He reflexively covered the fact that he wasn't really sure how _many_ weeks it had been. Couple of months, maybe three. Not quite three.

Bill shrugged. "I'll try."

"So what else haven't you told MacKenzie?" Daniel asked.

"Some of the Marines said it's my fault."

"Uh, no. Rafael and his thugs found us totally independent of anything you did."

"My fault that I talked."

"How the hell did Marines even know you told them anything?" Daniel asked, genuinely offended for his friend. "The whole mission is classified! Who told—"

"I told someone," Bill admitted. "Felger." He was staring at the floor again.

Daniel did let his eyes close this time. "You told _Felger_ what happened down there?" Well, that wouldn't stay a secret for long.

"Well, he kept asking. And I thought . . . it would be easier than telling MacKenzie."

Daniel opened an eye. "And was it?"

"Apparently not." Bill chuckled a little, but he obviously really didn't think it was funny. "Pretty stupid, right?"

"Felger? Yes, he's pretty stupid sometimes. You? You went through hell. You're entitled to a few mistakes."

"But you didn't give in."

"I've been tortured before."

"So?"

"So, um . . . I don't know. I've got practice. You don't. And no harm was done, not by what you said—"

"They turned it on! They shot you!"

"Yeah, and we'd probably both be dead if you'd said nothing. They'd have lost patience, probably turned it on, and shot us before or after. They might. . . ." Daniel sucked in a breath. He'd told MacKenzie this fear: what if the kidnappers had decided to test the revitalizing powers by shooting Daniel and Bill and healing them? He hid a shudder. It hadn't happened. That was the important thing. Bill had hardly been exposed at all, and Daniel's exposure had been brief enough. He'd "worked through" this one; Jack would be proud, if Daniel told him, which he didn't plan to do. Anybody who hadn't managed to think up that scenario certainly didn't need Daniel to provide it—and Bill was on the top of that list.

"Never mind what they might have done." Daniel had let his earlier sentence trail off and just started fresh. "It could have been worse, but it was bad enough. We don't have to feel lucky. We just have to get on with life."

"Just like that?" Bill glanced around. It was pretty amazing that this side of the infirmary was still empty but for them. Daniel wondered where Janet and the nurses were. "I can't even close the bedroom door all the way for very long. My wife is practically ready to divorce me. That's why . . . I should have closed my lab door the other day, but I keep . . . 'forgetting.' Kind of on purpose."

"Oh," Daniel said. "Have you talked to MacKenzie . . . ?"

"Yeah, we've been practicing closing his office door during our sessions." Bill gave a weak smile. "I'm up to the whole hour now, most days." After a pause, he added, "His office is pretty small."

"It's not doors for me," Daniel said after a pause. "It's . . . Jack had us all over for a barbecue after Sam got back from the incident on the Prometheus. It was hot, it was humid, we were all outside. . . . He put the meat on the grill, and. . . ."

"Oh, God. The smell." Bill knew. Bill understood.

"Yeah."

"So what did you do?"

"I ate inside. No meat that day. Mostly potato salad." Daniel smiled. "And Jack made me drink a beer. Beer cures everything, right?"

Bill laughed. "And did it?"

"No. Not a beer. But a beer with friends helps." Daniel chuckled. "You know what? We had roast lamb—well, I don't think it was really lamb, but I forgot to ask what it was, and it _was_ roasted—for dinner on the planet, before . . . before the wall fell on me, and I didn't even think about it."

"So it does get better?" Bill asked hopefully.

"It does get better. And, later—sometimes a lot later—well, it sounds kinda dumb, like 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger,' but you . . . you know now that you can survive. And that's . . . that's something. I'm sorry you had to go through it, Bill, but you did _get_ through it. You were captured by the enemy and survived, and you haven't pulled away from everything and everyone because something horrific happened. There are Marines who can't say the same. The ones who give you those smug looks, or blame you? It's because they haven't been through it. Either they're stupid enough to think they know what they'd do in your place, or they're scared to death they would break. You told them something, enough to keep us alive, but they never _broke_ you. Banged you up a little. But you did make it back, and you're with your wife and kids again. And no, everything's not all right, yet, but . . . it's getting there, right?"

God, he was tired. He just hoped he was making sense.

"Yeah. But I still wish it hadn't happened," Bill said with a shrug. "I'm not saying you're wrong, but. . . ."

"It's not worth it?" Daniel smiled as much as he could manage. Bill smiled a little in return. "No, of course it's not. It's not something you'd ever want to happen. But it _did_ happen, and we can't change that, so we go on. You work on closing doors, until one day you realize you haven't thought about closed doors in a while. And I go back to eating meat cooked over an open flame. And we both know that when . . . when terrible stuff happens, we can survive, and we can come back, and . . . we still have friends, family. And your wife isn't going to leave you over the bedroom door."

Bill smiled again. "No, she's not."

They lapsed into silence. Daniel was struggling so much to keep his eyes open that he couldn't really think of anything more to say. Then Janet was there at his bedside, gently asking Bill to leave.

"Janet?" he managed to ask when Bill was gone.

"Yes?" She'd started towards the door, but she came back.

"Thanks."

"For not interrupting, or for coming in when I did?"

Daniel couldn't see her face because his eyes wouldn't stay open, but he could hear a smile in her voice. "Both."


	8. Chapter 8

Daniel was asleep, but Jack figured they could wake him for this—though he made sure Janet was occupied with something in one of the labs before he actually entered the infirmary.

"Ta da!" He stood beside Daniel's bed and held up his pack.

Daniel started and scowled as he woke up. Carter grinned ear to ear as he grimaced. Jack was tempted to tell Daniel that he looked cute when he made faces while waking up, but he probably shouldn't say it when he was within arm's reach of Daniel. Or Carter. She was more dangerous, and she'd been very much on Daniel's side these last few days.

Daniel blinked up at him and then over at the other two and reached for his glasses.

"They wrapped it up in your pack and gave it to us!" Jack crowed, holding the backpack over the bed.

It obviously took a few moments for Daniel to remember what he was talking about. He put his glasses on slowly and focused on the pack. "They gave it to you? Already?"

"Yeah! Apparently we are _very_ persuasive."

"Daniel, you came back more than ten hours ago! The, um, town meeting ended," Carter explained. "They indicated that they wanted us to stay and eat. While we were finishing one of those big meals at someone's house, Kudadad suddenly brought us your pack! With the device in it!"

Daniel frowned as though he wasn't sure what was happening.

"It was a multi-hour meal," Jack said, rubbing his stomach. "Oh, yeah. Break out the Tums." Good food, though. Damn good. If only they could package that as MRE's. They had a lot of stew; why did US Gov't stew taste like crap when these people could. . . .

"We thought it would be rude to leave without eating, since they obviously wanted us to join them," Sam explained. "They kept saying your name; I think they missed you."

"I guess the elders pretty much had their minds made up, and they went up and got the thing out of the . . . temple thingy," Jack said.

Daniel couldn't seem to work up a reply, so Jack continued, "Yep. Apparently _this_ time they didn't need anybody's help, and nobody got hurt! You know, if you'd just taken me and Teal'c the first time, none of this ever would have happened! We'd have gotten the device, no concussions, no mistaken identities, no screaming mothers. . . ."

He was chewing Daniel out; so why was Daniel smiling like that?

*****

The next day Daniel felt far more rested, partly because Janet had allowed him to leave the infirmary. He had to spend the night on base and return to the infirmary in the morning for a check-up, but he'd slept through the night, and he hadn't been there long enough this time to get that frantic feeling he sometimes got that he would never be released. He wanted to get to Bill's lab before the others, but Jack and Teal'c arrived at about the same time he did.

He greeted his teammates briefly, but after he put down his file folder on the table, he concentrated fully on Bill. "You're sure you're okay with this?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure. I kind of wanted to get a good look at the one . . . we found, but I was still in the infirmary when General Carter took it to the Tok'ra."

"Well, look fast," Jack warned. "We put in a call to the Tok'ra as soon as we got back yesterday. If we needed _help_ , we could go whistle. Might never hear back. But since we have something for _them_ , I'm surprised they aren't here yet!"

"Jack. . . ."

"Daniel? You know it's true."

Bill was already watching the men like it was a tennis game, although he kept his head low so that it wouldn't be quite as obvious. Great start to the day. Daniel didn't bother to return the volley.

"So Major Carter hasn't even tried to do anything with it yet?" Bill asked, fidgeting with a pen.

"Nope. Straight into containment, then we paid a visit to Concussion Boy here"—Jack didn't even blink at Daniel's groan—"and then we had our official debriefing. To which I could _not_ bring enough Tums," Jack added.

"Sam said you ate enough for a week!"

"O'Neill ate as much as I did," Teal'c said with a note of approval.

Daniel hoped his face was sufficiently aghast.

He could see Bill's tension in his friend's hunched shoulders and endless fidgeting, but when Sam actually walked in with the box and said that they'd evacuated the levels above and below as well as this one, Bill froze and got a deer-in-the-headlights look for just a moment.

Then Sam really saw Bill's face, and something flickered in her eyes briefly. She carefully set the box down on a work table and smiled at Bill.

"Would you like to take it out?" she asked.

"Um, sure. No, wait, maybe—"

"Bill?" Daniel said. "Why don't you go ahead and do it?"

They could all see that Bill's hands were shaking a little as he fumbled the clasps on the thick, gray box. He opened the heavy cover and took a deep breath. Then he put his hands on the black box inside and pulled it slowly and gently from the padding.

Jack was rocking back and forth on his toes, but that was the only sign of impatience. Jack knew what Bill had been through. He wasn't going to rush him. Daniel smiled at him. Jack raised an eyebrow.

Bill set the device carefully on the table. "It doesn't look quite the same," he said with mild surprise.

Daniel joined him. "Know what? I think this one is a little _bigger_ , actually."

They looked at each other.

"Does that mean it's _more_ powerful?" Bill asked.

Daniel examined the writing. "I'm not . . . sure. It looks . . . similar, but the writing isn't exactly the same." He opened his folder and spread out some photos of the device they'd found before.

Sam and Bill both picked up hand-held devices and began taking readings.

"Maybe the one you two found was portable version?" Jack asked. "I think yours _was_ smaller." He kept his hands in his pockets.

"Dr. Lee?" Sam asked, frowning at her instrument.

"No, I'm not getting anything either." Bill's shoulders relaxed a little, but he too frowned.

Daniel compared two of the photos to two sides of the cube. "Guys? Could this be some kind of . . . prototype? We know he got the original idea from the Ancients, but then he tinkered with it. This one doesn't have anywhere near as much writing on it."

Sam shook her head as she tried more settings on her instruments. "We should be getting some kind of energy signature. Goa'uld technology is never _off_ off; it's always in standby mode. We get readings even when things aren't in use. But I'm not getting anything. No EM signatures."

"No radiation of any kind is coming off this," Bill added. He looked at Daniel. He snuck a look at the two officers. "Should I . . . ? I'll just turn it on and then turn it right back off."

"Are you _nuts_?" Jack asked, even though he knew perfectly well they were planning to try. Perhaps it was too much to ask that Jack continue to behave himself in Bill's lab.

"Jack, that's why we've evacuated part of the SGC! So we _could_ turn it on and off, make sure it's working properly, get some readings."

Sam shot Daniel a grateful look as she too reviewed the photos and compared them with the object in front of them.

"Daniel was in the hut with this thing for what, half an hour? An hour?" Bill asked. "And this one seems pretty well drained, so it probably won't do _anything_ ; it certainly wouldn't do _much_."

"I think I was only in there for about twenty minutes," Daniel said. "They . . . lost patience with me and—"

Bill flinched.

"Would it not be wise to see if we can learn anything before the Tok'ra take possession?" Teal'c asked.

Bill started a little at the deep voice. He must have forgotten Teal'c was in the room.

"I _would_ really . . . like to know a little more about it," Bill said in a low voice to Daniel. "I saw it . . . just when we went into the hut to turn it off. Just for a couple of minutes, tops."

Sam nodded vigorously. "We could get some useful readings. My dad took the other one out of here before I even got out of the infirmary!"

Daniel pointed to the writing on the photos. "What's missing are the proclamations of Telchak as maker and how great he is. I think this must have been an early version."

"Before he started mass-production?" Jack asked.

This time Daniel flinched along with Bill.

"Hey, I was only joking. We've found two of these, total. I don't think there are a lot out there." Jack sounded almost apologetic.

"But we found them both in less than three months!" Bill exclaimed in dismay.

Jack replied, "Maybe the one in Honduras was the travel version, for light packing, and this one was the big set to keep at home."

"Luck," Daniel said "If we hadn't found the one in Honduras, I'd never have asked if they had such a device on the planet. They would never have brought it up if I hadn't asked. And it seems that Telchak created it there—or adapted it from Ancient technology, really—then came to Earth with another, but he never went back to his home base. So he probably met his end on Earth, or not long after, and didn't have time to make more."

"God, I hope not," Jack said.

Bill nodded. "And I really think this one is out of juice."

Sam kept almost putting her hands on the device but finally said, "Bill, you want to do the honors?"

Bill stiffened. He almost touched it, but then he hesitated.

"How about you do it, Daniel? I mean, it was your find. Both times."

"Actually, Bill—"

"Oh, cut the Alphonse and Gaston routine already! Carter, you do it if they won't," Jack ordered.

Daniel stepped in and pressed the panels they had previously agreed should activate it. Nothing happened. Bill watched Daniel. Daniel looked at Bill. Sam watched an instrument in her hand. No vibration, no glow, no hum, nothing.

"I'm still getting no readings," Sam confirmed.

"Try this panel instead," Bill pointed. "If it was a prototype, it might not work exactly the same way."

"Uh, Bill? That one essentially says, 'Off,'" Daniel told him, but he pressed it anyway.

"Nothing," Sam reiterated.

Bill finally tried some combinations of panels himself, to no effect.

"So, what, the batteries gave out?" Jack asked.

Daniel shrugged. "Kudadad said they hadn't used it in a very long time. It was walled up for centuries."

"In a hot but dry climate," Sam mused.

"They do have a brief rainy season," Daniel pointed out.

"Did you notice any mold inside the room where it was kept?" she asked him.

"What, this stuff _rusts_?" Jack asked. Daniel and Sam ignored his question.

Daniel grimaced. "I barely remember the corridor outside the room," he said apologetically.

Sam nodded sympathetically. "Oh, right!" She'd had her share of concussions too. Apparently the most recent one was a doozy: she said that she'd hallucinated all of them on board the ship with her. That sounded kind of comforting, actually. Daniel had never hallucinated anything remotely nice.

They tried every combination they could think of, but nothing got any response from the black box. At last, Bill lifted it gently back into the container.

"Well, that's an anticlimax!" Jack added.

Daniel grinned. "But Jack, this is _good_ news!"

"You dropped a temple on your head for nothing?"

"We got to know these people better than we otherwise would have!" Daniel insisted. He knew Jack wouldn't admit out loud that he was right, but he was sure Jack knew it, or at least he could convince him. "We don't have to worry about this device, and we probably don't need to worry that there are others concealed on that planet; if there are, they probably don't work anymore either. And now we've got a good chance at establishing close ties with an ally; we _know_ they're a real ally because they went to all this trouble to give us the device, and they haven't played any games with us—"

"—unless they _knew_ it wouldn't work!" Jack countered.

Daniel rolled his eyes and went on, "We know about the hearing disorder and maybe _can_ help in the future if someone needs it; and they've got a _phenomenal_ history, Jack! Both written and oral! Not to mention their architecture and their engineering achieve—"

"And," Bill added, "if there _is_ anything to be learned, the Tok'ra can take care of it. They can probably figure out some way to power it." He brushed his hands together, though there was nothing really on them to brush off. "I've got other projects to work on."

Jack grinned. "And if they drive themselves bats with it. . . . You think we can arrange for Anise to work on this thing?"

"Only if she doesn't need any Tau'ri test subjects," Daniel said with a smile. He no longer felt guilty about his behavior with the Atenik armband. More than that, he no longer hated Anise for what she had almost done to Jack and Sam—or Freya, for trying to seduce Jack when the rest of them were all worried Jack and Sam might both die. He still resented Anise, for several reasons, but he figured he was entitled to that.

"Okay," Bill said, confidently slapping shut the box and doing up all the clasps without faltering. "One delivery for the Tok'ra." He looked at the others. "Anything else?"

"That's all I've got." Sam smiled. "Maybe you can get back to your super-armor now?"

"Oh, yeah! Look, the goggles didn't work out, but I think I've got a good start on some blast-absorbing light armor that we could make into a vest. It'd be better than our current flak jackets, especially for staff blasts!" He led Sam over to another table and continued talking animatedly.

Jack put a hand on Daniel's shoulder. "You okay?"

"Yeah, fine."

Jack rolled his eyes. "You really wanna go back next week? That . . . yesterday seemed to take a lot out of you."

Daniel nodded. "Yeah. But . . . the place has a lot to give, too. And . . . it feels kinda like home."

"You can't stay," Jack said sharply. "And no: if a mastage follows you home, you can't keep it."

Daniel couldn't help but smile a little.

"You're sure it's not. . . ?" Jack didn't quite finish the question.

"It's not Abydos. No, I have no intention of getting married, or staying, or _adopting_ anything—or anyone." He was glad to see that got a little start out of Jack.

"I will return this to storage," Teal'c announced, hefting the big box as if it were made of styrofoam.

Jack walked over to where the two scientists were hunched over something black on a table. He dropped one hand on Bill's shoulder and one on Sam's; he started to say something, but Bill jumping half a foot kind of cut him off. Daniel shook his head. Sam was shaking her head, too, but with perhaps a little more amusement.

"Don't mind him," Daniel called, walking over. "It's his childhood."

"What was wrong with _my_ childhood?" Jack shot back.

"Nothing. It seems to be going well, even if it is rather protracted. . . ."

"Hey, I'm not—"

Bill had turned to stare at them—both of them. "Do you mind?" He sounded annoyed. He sounded annoyed _at Jack_ , annoyed enough to meet his eyes. Then he turned his back on them again, and Sam asked another question.

Daniel grinned at Jack. "Right. Do you mind? People are trying to work here!"

Sam shook for just a moment in a silent giggle. Daniel turned and walked away, knowing Jack would follow.

"Hey," Sam called over her shoulder. "Team lunch today, Daniel. We have some things to talk about. 1230." It wasn't a question. It was a command.

So much for the fun. Sam and Teal'c must have been pestering Jack to tell them what Daniel had said yesterday. He was pretty sure Jack hadn't told Sam and Teal'c what he'd confided on the walk to the Gate yesterday; he'd wait for Daniel to tell them. But Daniel knew they'd want to know what he said, exactly, that had upset him and made the crowd look at him that way.

Maybe they could get sandwiches and go to his office, where at least no one would overhear. Strangely, though, he felt better now about acknowledging what had happened in Central America. He was almost ready to accept the reassurances he knew they would give that it wasn't his fault—that Bill had been captured, that he'd been exposed to alien technology yet again, that he'd _wanted_ those men to die, and painfully.

Some old pains were always going to bother him, but while time didn't heal all wounds, gradually, they hurt less, and less often. He'd learned that a long time ago, and now Bill seemed to be learning it too. A pity there was no easier way to learn it.

Jack followed him out the door and towards the elevator. "You know one of those things we have to talk about? _Abandoning_ your superiors among people who just jabber at them!" Jack added loudly, stepping up to Daniel's side. "You realize we are never leaving you alone on a planet again."

Teal'c was just getting into the elevator with the large box with "Danger!" stickers on the outer case. He held the door for them.

Daniel considered pointing out that Jack had said that many times before, or that the previous day, Jack had preferred staying on a planet full of jabbering people to bringing Daniel back to Janet personally. Instead, he said simply, "Great! I can always use another hand to help make rubbings, or do video recording. And it helps to have someone to bounce my ideas off. . . ."

Jack was obviously about to make some biting reply, but as the two of them piled in after Teal'c, two other people who had already clearly pushed the button for a different floor looked at the three men and at the box and decided to get out now. Daniel waved sheepishly at the junior officers as the doors closed and the elevator started moving. Yeah, sandwiches with his team would be good. Maybe Janet's non-professional opinion was right, and they did deserve each other.

FIN


End file.
